Collecting is a hereditary disease. In my case, it came from both the maternal line (ethnic art) and the paternal line (English transferware). A most unfortunate case. I started with geodes and stamps (ages 7-11), occasionally meandered into coins (ages 8-10), and honored my teenage years by adding a hundred international beer bottles to my wall. I finally caught the book collecting fever by age 19, mercifully leaving the tragically geeky collecting fields behind.
At first, I grabbed whatever tickled my fancy, but as I simultaneously matured and ran out of shelf space, I homed in on a particular subject: books on food. Call me crazy, but I love Victorian manuals on traditional arts such as preserving fruit, butchering pigs, harvesting ice, growing carrots, dressing grocery shop windows, etc.
I was thrilled when CHOW.com asked me to write a series of articles on these very books. I am fascinated by the relationship of the older books on these subjects to the renewed interest in traditional foodways. Some of the books still resonate, while others are completely outmoded.
Most industrial advances are countered by a movement back toward the earth: witness the Industrial Revolution of the 1860’s and the reactionary Arts & Crafts movement; the frozen food landscape of the 1950’s followed by back-to-the-landers in the 1960’s; and today’s GMO’s and agribusinesses pushed back by organic, local, and sustainable values. My aim in this series is to connect the dots and see how far we’ve come. Or how far we’ve tried to move back.
