Piero Fornasetti, designer

Fleming Joffe, a small leather-goods company in New York, commissioned designer Piero Fornasetti to create plates given annually as New Year’s gifts to clients, each featuring a decidedly unlikely and humorous recipe. Referencing Fleming Joffe’s use of reptile skins, several plates present recipes for reptiles, such as Dragon Lizard–au-Feu and Python à l’Orange. Another pokes fun at a competitor—the Corfam a la Du Pont plate makes light of the DuPont Company’s foray into imitation leather, which was costly to produce and failed to provide comfort or breathability. The plate describes the Corfam bird as “self-raised by long years of enterprising” and “toughened by chance survival and daily rations of polyester fiber, polyurethane, and coal.”