Buon Natale!

One of our editors remarked that your cover looked like an advent calendar, and I thought, that’s what every cover should feel like, the anticipation of what’s going to be inside. How did you come up with the idea of staging a kitchen?

I found the assignment inspiring: nothing too sweet or seasonal, no Santa, nothing too predictable. Drawing scenes from the everyday fascinates me. The isometric perspective had to be there too, so I can put as much as possible into in an illustration. I love to look in every corner of a room and peek through an open door or window. My idea was to look behind the scenes: the preparing and cleaning of the home for guests. The other—annoying—side of the holidays. So I thought showing a kitchen with all the cooking and shopping and setting the table, all this going on at the same time as the owner has to answer the door to receive parcels from the postman, would best illustrate the “Holidays.” Sophia Martineck, illustratrice berlinese, intervistata da Leanne Shapton, The New York Review of Books

auguro a tutti un buon Natale in cucine allegre, calde, disordinate, rumorose e odorose!