Products, recipes and moments around the table form an archive of customs. We explore their contexts to understand them beyond the memory of a particular taste.
Readings to help you find your bearings.
Rough textures, mixed typefaces and ornament can make a contemporary product look rooted in the past. A study of coffee packaging identifies these devices and the associations they evoke, while distinguishing visual impressions from a brand’s actual history.
Open storyFood, cooking and drink form part of food heritage. The available sources show why exhibiting them also means considering practices, contexts and ways of passing knowledge on.
Open storyPaintings, studies and written recollections leave traces of the merienda. Read carefully, they help investigate its depictions and accounts, but cannot alone establish a general practice.
Open storyPackaging, advertisements and cookbooks document ingredients and presentation. Their context helps distinguish commercial promotion from practices in the home.
This topic explores food and dining culture. Everyday Life broadens the view to include rituals, while Design looks at the visual languages of packaging.
Three perspectives on the archive.
How food products are presented in their packaging, between commercial promotion and everyday use.
Neo-Retro Packaging and the Visual Language of the Past What a Food Date Can—and Cannot—Tell YouRecipes and utensils offer a way to explore the practices of cooking and eating at home.
A food museum preserves more than recipes Recipes, labels and packaging: what an archive can tell us about foodThe rituals and spaces through which meals are shared and become part of custom.
The merienda appears in archives, but not as a single custom Table museums and intangible memoryElectric refrigerators and gas stoves did not enter every Argentine home at once. From the 1920s to the 1970s, infrastructure, prices, credit, local production and custom shaped access to these appliances, while radio and cars helped reorganize domestic work and leisure.
Read articleA source identifies Goya’s painting, also called *The Picnic*, as a work from 1776 and says it was inspired by a play of the same name. The scene documents an artistic depiction of a merienda, not everyday practice in itself.
Read articleA Museo del Pueblo de Asturias post dates the establishment of the La Herminia factory in Gijón to 1885. It produced La Herminia, Plin and Sueve chocolates.
Read articleFernando Rocchi’s study examines the circulation of electric refrigerators and gas stoves in Argentina from 1920 to 1970, and how these appliances influenced domestic practices.
Read articleArgentine company Siam Di Tella began manufacturing household refrigerators in 1935 and promoted them through advertisements and demonstrations.
Read articleJ.F. McCullough, his son Alex, and Sherb Noble founded Dairy Queen in Joliet, Illinois, introducing soft-serve ice cream as an innovation to prevent rapid melting.
Read articleElectric refrigerators and gas stoves did not enter every Argentine home at once. From the 1920s to the 1970s, infrastructure, prices, credit, local production and custom shaped access to these appliances, while radio and cars helped reorganize domestic work and leisure.
Neo-retro design combines graphic codes from different periods to give contemporary packaging an impression of craft and authenticity. A study of package design identifies the devices behind that effect and explores the associations they evoke—without treating them as proof of a brand’s history or how its products are made.
Rough textures, mixed typefaces and ornament can make a contemporary product look rooted in the past. A study of coffee packaging identifies these devices and the associations they evoke, while distinguishing visual impressions from a brand’s actual history.
Textures, muted colours, ornaments and prominent dates can make a new package seem rooted in another era. Research on neo-retro design examines these visual codes and the associations they evoke—while distinguishing the appearance of tradition from a brand history that can be substantiated.
Textures, typefaces and ornaments can make contemporary packaging evoke tradition and craftsmanship. A study of neo-retro design explores how those associations are formed—and why they should not be mistaken for a brand’s actual history.
Analyzes how ethnographic museums attempt to document food as a cultural and sensory phenomenon, overcoming the limitation of displaying only physical objects.
Examines how ethnographic museums manage the perishability of food through packaging and graphic documents, shifting the focus from the physical product to the surrounding cultural practices.
Beyond bonbon production, La Herminia's history is understood through its lithographic plates. This report examines how 1960s graphic advertising in Asturias documented an industrial transition and left a tangible legacy in local collections.
An analysis of how the industrialization of the snack transformed the relationship between consumer and light food, moving from a functional complement to a product with its own identity.
An analysis of how the adoption of durable appliances reconfigured domestic life and gender dynamics in Argentina between 1920 and 1970, based on Fernando Rocchi's research.
The museumization of food culture clashes with the ephemeral nature of the gastronomic experience. We analyze how ethnographic museums attempt to preserve the sensory and social aspects of food beyond physical objects.
Examines how Requena's meat tradition moved from domestic slaughter to an institutionalized model with a regulatory council and annual fair.
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