Tuscany
Tuscany
Book
Mario Matassa’s Tuscany is a recipe book compiling more than 50 simple, authentic recipes from the region renowned for a remarkable culinary tradition. The book explores local food traditions, producers, world-class wines, and ingredients ranging from truffles to artisan salami and “lardo di Colonnata” (a type of preserved pork fat). Including over 150 specially commissioned photographs, it reveals a side of the region and its food that many tourists never experience, providing a unique visual journey around one of the world’s best food regions.
Since this book was to be part of a series on Italian food, the typeface needed to be appropriate for all regions of Italy. Taking the delicate stone-carved typography found in Italy as a reference, we selected a classic serif typeface for the main text of the book. We paired it with a condensed sans-serif typeface, which is also found on Italian street signs. For the cover, we collaborated closely with the illustrator Beppe Giacobbe, who brought humour into the design. The landscape and food were sensitively and poetically photographed by Edward Park, who met all the generous producers and farmers whose produce is displayed in the book.
Publisher: Phaidon
Texts: Mario Matassa
Illustration: Beppe Giacobbe
Photography: Edward Park
2011