Friday, February 23, 2024

Food is More Fun with... Wine

Here are a handful of wonderful key art examples found in the neat little midcentury booze booklet, "Food is more fun with... Wine," courtesy of Italian Swiss Colony California Wines. Basically a "cooking with" type recipe collection, the real highlight here are the adorable puppet couple (made of cork, no less!) featured throughout on most of the pages and intermingling with the various subject matter. No artist credit is given anywhere in the booklet, unfortunately. The female of the two wins by a landslide though as far as immensely interesting goes, so I'm focusing this post on her and leaving the dopey dude hanging on a dark shelf back in the cupboard. Sorry dude!

3 comments:

Brian Barnes said...

I get the puppets being cork and the illustrations are cute but .. unsettling. It looks like they have the plague!

We might be riddled with seeping blisters but damn it, we can't drink wine without pie so here's to inflecting everybody with our dread disease!

I love the wild smiles you get in a lot of these advertisements. 5 image is a great cartoon-y/realistic image with that vacant smile.

JMR777 said...

Since the artist failed to give names to these two, I nominate to name the guy Corky and the lady Cora, or Signorina Sughero, Italian for Miss Cork.

Mr. Cavin said...

Hm. I think they look like they've got freckles. Which sort of fits right in with them being sunny Californians all dressed up as Swiss misses and misters for some BYOB theme party. The west coast costume shop has come up with some pretty strange looking lederhosen, that's for sure. The lederhosen I've seen has all been made of tanned saddle leather and is tough as nails. Shorts overalls may seem silly but IRL it comes off rugged as hell. This cork man looks more like a piƱata.

Think I like the fourth image best. I would definitely check out a food truck with that painted on the side. Or even a wine truck.

I can't believe you managed to avoid an "I don't drink... wine" joke in the intro.