The exclusive members wine club 67 Pall Mall recently launched their newest book ‘Wine & the Food of Asia’. The book explores how you can pair wines with Asian cuisine, and I created illustrated maps for each of the chapters.
I worked with the book’s designer Lawrence Morton to devise a layout where I could show the countries in the map in each chapter, with featured cities, and also illustrate some of the foods representative of those places.
It is a beautiful hefty book, full of gorgeous photographs, as well as my maps.
I thoroughly enjoyed researching the foods from all these countries, and illustrating in a loose drawn style to capture the flavours of dishes and ingredients as much as possible.
Working around the gutter of the book was a challenge, as I had to keep anything important out of the middle of the map. I really enjoyed creating the pattern of the sea that is all hand painted in watercolour!
As well as ingredients and finished dishes, I researched the tools and equipment used in Asian cooking, and had fun playing with the shapes and textures of these objects.
I also subtly reflected each region in the border design I made for each map. I researched local textiles and ceramics to come up with a pattern that would be representative but not too specific.
The first maps I created had lines around the country borders to give more definition, and darker colours on the backgrounds of each country, but these were eventually removed to make the maps more minimal. Here’s the original Japan/Korea map with darker colours.
I hope the book is a success! I loved making these maps.