MEIER, Frank (1884 - 1947) 
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The Artistry of Mixing Drinks Paris : The Fryam Press¹, 1 October 1936. First edition. One of 700 copies on cream vellum (from the total edition of 1026), out-of-series. Printed by Bishop & Sons, Paris. In English Quarto (195x145mm) publisher's gold and green illustrated, cream coloured stiff card wrappers, heavy cream paper, flush untrimmed edges, double column text printed black and red, with a red border of the author's monogram 'FM', [2],182pp. Numerous monochrome Art-deco style illustrations, wine maps, and twenty-four pages of illustrated advertisements for many of the author's suppliers at the Ritz. Unopened. Wrappers very faintly soiled, spine faintly creased. Text block tight, bright and clean.
¶ A scarce and highly desirable cocktail book, recording the drinks and wider lore of one of the most celebrated bars of the inter-war period. Born in the Tyrol to a family of innkeepers, Frank Meier (1884–1953) spent most of his working life behind the bar, first in London and New York, and subsequently in France and Belgium. After his discharge from the French Foreign Legion at the end of the First World War, he was appointed to run the bar at the Hôtel Ritz Paris, then one of the most fashionable and expensive hotels in the world. He remained there until 1947, becoming one of the most celebrated bartenders of his generation. The Artistry of Mixing Drinks contains nearly 500 recipes, encompassing classic and contemporary cocktails together with many of the popular drinks served at the Ritz. More than forty are attributed to Meier himself, identified by his distinctive monogram, including his celebrated Bee's Knees, Olympic, and Corpse Reviver No. 2. The book extends well beyond the conventional cocktail manual. Meier includes a substantial chapter on wine regions and vintages, illustrated with elegantly designed maps; recipes for sandwiches, canapés and savouries; and practical advice on bartending. The remainder ranges widely through the miscellany of knowledge expected of a maître barman of the Ritz: horse racing, antidotes to poisons, world time zones and nautical measurements, the dimensions of the earth, the deepest point of the ocean and the height of Everest, together with instructions for calculating the carat weight of a diamond, removing stains from an oil painting, and assisting victims of drowning, lightning strike or snakebite. An unusually accomplished production, both as a cocktail book and as a record of the sophisticated drinking culture of the Ritz in its inter-war heyday. Its combination of recipes, practical instruction, wine lore and eclectic miscellany gives it a character quite apart from the ordinary cocktail manual. Highly collectible and scarce. A near-fine, unopened copy of one of the most elegantly designed, written and published cocktail books. § OCLC records only 13 holdings, all in North America and the UK. § Noling p.286; EUVS; not in Gabler. ¹ I.e., self published. ² Wondrich, David & Rothbaum, Noah (ed). The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails. New York : Oxford University Press, 2022 p. 454. Item #11157
1550,- EUR
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Sachgebiete: Kochbücher, Gastronomie, Wein
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