Art Made of Fat, Velvet Liberace and the Discovery of Bone

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post #100

In the world of found book objects, few I think are as deeply removed and as deeply obscure as the work by Otto F. Fleiss called White Art in the Meat Food Business.  A Practical Handbook for Butcher, Pork Stores, Restaurants, Hotels and Delicatessens on How to Make Lasting and Transferable White Art Decorations out of Bacon Fat Back for Window Displays, Ornaments on Meat Food Cold Buffets and for Exhibits and Advertising Purposes.  Enrich yourself with Personal Knowledge. 

If the title of this book could itself be described in terms of food, I think that I'd have to call it a (warm) Slim Jim Egg Frosty with a crust of French fries, baked.  Or something like that.  If the exhaustive, exhausting title didn't stop you in your tracks, though, the slim pamphlet holds some indelible, indigestible, eyebrow-burning, flat-out remarkable images.  Working your way through this pamphlet is as much fun as stringing together dirty diapers:  you can enjoy instructions on how to make a vase of roses out of strips of fat, or produce the reverse (?!) portrait of Santa Claus in slabs of fat, or marvel at the photos of Mr. Fleiss' "first prize" (?) 200-pound fat sculpture of a cathedral done entirely in slips and chunks and strips of fat.  (We are told of  Fleiss' "Master Piece" that  "the church is still in existence, having become petrified".  (What a magnificent image is this, the petrified church (made of fat).)

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