A conversation with Francesca Gavin about Phaidon’s forthcoming Fungi: The World of Mushrooms and what our enduring fascination with fungi reveals about us.
The detail that rearranged my head: the toadstool became mushroom shorthand largely because Victorian children's illustrators found it easy to draw. A whole kingdom, most of it underground and stranger than any fairy tale, and its public face was picked the way a tired intern picks a stock photo. I also liked that mushrooms only shifted from symbol of rot to something playful in the last couple of centuries, which means my childhood certainty that the red-and-white one is "obviously where a gnome lives" was, in effect, a marketing campaign. I will now be bringing up those early Asian scroll works at dinner as though I have always known about them.
The detail that rearranged my head: the toadstool became mushroom shorthand largely because Victorian children's illustrators found it easy to draw. A whole kingdom, most of it underground and stranger than any fairy tale, and its public face was picked the way a tired intern picks a stock photo. I also liked that mushrooms only shifted from symbol of rot to something playful in the last couple of centuries, which means my childhood certainty that the red-and-white one is "obviously where a gnome lives" was, in effect, a marketing campaign. I will now be bringing up those early Asian scroll works at dinner as though I have always known about them.
I look forward to exploring the book further. 🙏
Thanks for this conversation, Joe. So interesting! I’m looking forward to the book.