The Beauty of the Fold

This second book in the ground-breaking On the Table series about the culture of gastronomy as artistic expression - edited by Charlotte Birnbaum - delves into the art of napkin folding. It features German master Joan Sallas, whose folded napkins graced the Metropolitan Museum's exhibit of 1780 Viennese royal table silver. (Watch him fold a ''water lily'' napkin on YouTube.) Birnbaum interviews Sallas on the history of napkin folding, stretching back to the Renaissance and Baroque, and contributes a short essay on the art's complex history; the remainder of the book is an illustrated catalog of Sallas's ornate folding techniques.