_Current Favourite Book: 'Wild Raspberries'

_“I shall never forget the first time that I met Andy Warhol, it was 1959, and he greeted me at the door of his fourth floor walk-up that he shared with his mother Julia Warhola, with a warmth as if we had known each other for years. He was especially fascinated by the fact that I had grown up in Malibu and had lived next door to Myrna Loy. He also loved the fact I collected antique jewellery. I felt we had become new best friends in an instant. We made a lunch date for the following day, and that was how it started. We met at the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel and after lunch we went immediately to Forty-seventh Street so I could introduce Andy to a couple of my favourite jewellery dealers.

After that first lunch and shopping expedition, it became a regular habit that we would lunch and go shopping. Andy hated the fact that I spent money of clothes and would chide me when a new outfit appeared. In some ways he was terribly practical. The first time he came for dinner at my apartment he brought me a gold vermeil rose from Tiffany. I filled a glass Coke bottle with water and put the rose in. He liked that a lot. It was then that we decided to write a cookbook, a sort of knock-off of the complicated French gourmet books that were so much in vogue in the fifties. We worked all through September and by the middle of October had made one copy. I wrote the recipes, Andy illustrated with his Dr. Martin’s dyes, and Mrs. Warhola did the calligraphy. We wanted all the books to be hand-coloured, so we hired four boys from upstairs to come in and colour every afternoon. Our progress was very slow, and in the end we only made thirty-four full-colour books. The rest had five colour illustrations. We titled the book ‘Wild Raspberries’, after the movie ‘Wild Strawberries’. We found some wonderfully shiny paper for the cover and proceeded downtown to the rabbis who did hand binding. Thus we were publishers.

Now the big question was, who was going to buy our wares? We dragged around a shopping bag filled with these masterpieces, convinced that New York bookstores would ply us with orders. What a disappointment. No one bought any, but we left a few on consignment at Doubleday and Rizzoli. Thus it was left to our friends to take them off our hands and give them away as Christmas presents. Oh well, it was a great fun project, which surely cemented forever my relationship with Andy.”

- Suzie Frankfurt talking on the story behind the ‘Wild Raspberries’ cookbook in 1997.
‘Wild Raspberries’ was re-published by Bulfinch Press in 1997.