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Magazine of the week: Fire & Knives

As I mentioned in a recent post, I read the whole of the launch issue of Fire & Knives on the flight to NY. My enjoyment of the magazine was two-fold – it’s a great read and it looks beautiful too.

Unusually for a food magazine, it comes in a tiny format (about 160x190mm) and on uncoated, matt stock. Most food magazines use glossy or silk coated stock to make the most of their food photography (the only exception I’m aware of being Jamie Olivers’ recent launch Jamie, which takes great care to use the appropriate print profile to reproduce photography on matt stock). Fire & Knives’ use of a matt stock is helped by the fact it deliberately avoids food photography, that most expensive element of food publishing.

The magazine was set up by editor Tim  Hayward as an alternative to the mainstream food publishing magazines, and in his editor’s letter he explains that he briefed the writers – mainly professional food critics – to ‘write as an amateur about something you love’. And that’s exactly what we get, a series of random but fascinating pieces that each take a unique aspect of food culture.

Which means a profile of horror actor/foodie Vincent Price (above); a rumination on collecting cookery books by Tom Parker Bowles; and a piece on cooking with tobacco (below).

There’s also a great piece by Jack Chilcott about the idealistic group eating arrangements at the modernist Lawn Road Flats in London’s Belsize Park (below).

The whole thing is designed in a journal manner, with no traditional page furniture. There’s a simple two column grid that runs through all 110 pages, and designer Rob Lowe isn’t afraid to run spreads consisting entirely of text. The small pages help with this, they’re very readable.

Plus there are a few image spreads thrown in – this one, below, features little signs designed to indicate what sandwiches contain.

The spread below opens a photo essay on a pop-up restaurant in east London.

This is a really lovely and subtle magazine that relishes its content and presents it in a cute format and design that is different in every sense from the mainstream food press while not going overboard and being self-consciously different.

Buy it here.