WARHOL’S SECRET RECIPES
‘Wild Raspberries’ cookbook goes up for auction
As a young commercial illustrator in New York City in the 1950s, Andy Warhol drew whimsical illustrations to sell everything from soda pop to designer shoes.
He also created a series of books with hand-drawn illustrations and titles such as “Love Is a Pink Cake” and “25 Cats Named Sam.”
In 1959, he whipped up “Wild Raspberries” with his lunch mate and jewelry shopping partner, Suzie Frankfurt, an interior designer who admired Warhol’s watercolors at Serendipity, an Upper East Side ice cream parlor. The two first met over lunch at the Plaza Hotel.
The cookbook, a parody of elaborate French recipes — “A & P Surprise” and “Chocolate Balls a la Chambord” were two — was published the same year when The Four Seasons, a landmark restaurant in food history, opened in New York
new Seagram Building.
“Usually, these books were released at Christmas and given to clients and friends,” said Blake Gopnik, author of the 2020 biography “Warhol.”
Imagine Warhol and Frankfurt’s surprise to see a signed copy of “Wild Raspberries,” inscribed to fashion icon D. D. Ryan, go up for auction this week at Bonhams in New York City. Fine books experts at the auction house expect the chapbook with 18 lithograph illustrations to go for $30,000-$50,000. In 2019, Bonhams auctioned another copy for 49,000 pounds, or $68,196. Online bids will be taken from noon Monday through noon March 30 at bonhams.com.
Jaime Frankfurt, a son of Suzie Frankfurt, believes he has the first copy of “Wild Raspberries.” He said Warhol, a Pittsburgh native, worked with his father at the famous ad agency Young & Rubicam and had a special friendship with his mother.
“Mother was wickedly smart and funny. ... They hit it off immediately. They became fast and great friends until Andy died,” said Mr. Frankfurt, an art adviser based in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.
As Warhol began his meteoric rise as a pop artist in the 1960s, Suzie Frankfurt devoted herself to raising her sons, Jaime and his brother, Peter. In 1990, she left New York City for Sandisfield, Mass. The two friends lost touch for a few years but then reconnected.
“They had a similar sense of humor and wit in common. They both always got the joke in everything in life,” said Peter Frankfurt, a film producer in Los Angeles.
“She just loved Andy so much. He was a good friend to her in a lot of ways. It’s so nice that the cookbook endured. It’s a nice talisman of their friendship.”
Peter Frankfurt said the book’s title was a play on “Wild Strawberries,” a 1957 film directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Chapbooks like this one were shown at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side in 2018 during the exhibition “Adman: Warhol Before Pop.” The museum puts the books on view periodically because they are part of its permanent collection.
“They were made in various degrees of completion. Some were all hand-colored. Others weren’t,” said Peter Frankfurt, guessing only a few dozen fully colored versions of “Wild Raspberries” were made.
“It’s just a delightful, absolutely fun and whimsical book. I read it to our kids when they were little. It was just so absurd, and they loved it. They didn’t get all the allusions,” he said.
Peter Frankfurt said his children were 5 and 7 years old when their grandmother died in January 2005, and hearing her silly recipes read aloud is special to them.
“They didn’t really get to know my mother very well because she passed away when they were young,” he said.
In 1997, “Wild Raspberries” was reprinted in a smaller format in paperback. Jaime Frankfurt wrote the foreword.
“We grew up with Andy. I was very fond of him and his whole world,” Peter Frankfurt said, recalling his older brother worked at Warhol’s Factory for a summer when he was 16.
Jaime Frankfurt said his copy of “Wild Raspberries” was sent to an agent for the actor Tony Curtis, who sent it back.
As teenagers, the Frankfurt boys didn’t get to spend much time with Warhol, but they idolized Fred Hughes, his manager.
“He was the most well dressed, stylish guy imaginable,” Peter Frankfurt said. “He was built like Fred Astaire. He knew everyone.
“He would take us to a nightclub. Literally, we would meet the best-looking women in the world, and because we were with Fred, they would all talk to us.”
He recalls sitting across from Jerry Hall, the famous model.
“She was gorgeous,” he added, underlining the word in a celebrity-worshipping tone worthy of Andy Warhol.