Recetario — Natalia Ramírez

Conceptual Art Object Design

Recetario / All Is Leaf

Conceptually, Recetario is a capsule of collective food histories. As an object it invites us to document, and to hand down, the pieces of our culture that manifest through our relationships to food, to nature, and to each other.

Recetario holds a collection of recipes by Panamanian chef Andrea Pinzón of Baran Blü, a pop-up kitchen that celebrates seasonal Panamanian vegetables, honoring their natural cycles and origins. Pulled from her recipe book Cocina Circular (Circular Kitchen), I created a wooden recipe box with 4 categories of recipes: seasonal, non-traditional, zero-waste and 0km (ingredients that don’t travel far to reach the table). The recipe cards are accompanied by a seasonal calendar of Panamanian fruits, vegetables and foods, inviting us to choose to eat in harmony with our local cycles of nature.

This project started to come to life the day I found a recipe box at my grandmother’s house, full of her handwritten recipes, on the day of her funeral.

2023
MFA Design
School of Visual Arts

The details engraved on the corners of Recetario are inspired by cross-stitch patterns that are hand-sewn into the typical Panamanian dress, la pollera.

The exact dimensions and joinery methods from my grandmother’s recipe box were replicated, handmade in reclaimed mahogany (caoba), a native wood of Panama.

Recipe cards and a seasonal calendar of local foods live inside the recipe box. The object serves as a capsule for the memories shared around the table throughout time, as well as a container for homemade dishes to be handed down over generations.

The presentation of Recetario was followed by a shared meal I prepared and served around a makeshift table in the middle of our grad school classroom.

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