The voluptuous Sophia Loren supposedly quipped “everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” This remark, although apocryphal, serves as an epigrammatic reminder that the food we plant, harvest, package, prepare and eat is a reflection of ourselves and our culture.
The distinguished Ephemera/34 speakers have undoubtedly deeply immersed themselves in the “Loren Theorem” and will demonstrate how the often visually stunning ephemera of food and drink similarly both mirrors and influences culture. While this may sound frightfully over-academic to some, one must remember that others have frequently considered food ephemera to be merely rather modern paper abundantly found in dollar bins at antique malls. Apparently, at least in in the popular imagination, the ephemera of food and drink occupies opposite ends of the collecting spectrum: from highfalutin to commonplace.