You have to go far away, to Vienna in 1923, to witness the birth of the Phaidon publishing house, a centenary full of vicissitudes and great successes. The ashes of the Austro-Hungarian empire were no longer even warm, but culture continued to flourish on every corner, in every palace, in every craftsman’s workshop. The war had claimed a dynasty, but the creative explosion since the end of the 19th century continued to wreak havoc.
Three brave men, Béla Horovitz, Fritz Ungar and Ludwig Goldscheider, proposed to create a publishing house and put on the shelves well-edited, beautiful and affordable books with special editions, some international, such as those of Van Gogh, Boticelli and the French Impressionists.
The rise of the Nazis meant that the editors, of Jewish origin, had to move to London. And with them many of the great names of Austro-Germanic culture, from Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Karl Kraus, Victor and Alfred Adler, Arthur Schnitzler and a long list.
You have to go very far, to suburban London, to Bromley by Bow (ultra-modern village and hub), to see how that initiative has become a center of bibliophile creation in which the great artists of history, the best chefs, Rihanna, Nike or the rappers of the moment. The secret then and now is good taste and the intuition to stay ahead of trends.
In the new offices of the firm, with 1,500 titles in circulation, waits its editorial director, Emilia Terragni, who summarizes one hundred years of work in a few sentences. “The red thread is creativity and an audience with curiosity to enter an unknown world.
“We are turning one hundred years old and that is partly luck, courage and work. Despite all the changes of the 20th century, Phaidon continues to live because it was so innovative at the beginning that the path was laid out. But, in addition, we have taken risks.”
Terragni remembers great hits of the house such as the one she prepared, The Silver Spoon, the Korean or Peruvian cuisine, those dedicated to Ferran Adrià, which marks a before and after, or those that analyze the DNA of the hip hop culture.
They are great successes that hardly sell 55,000 copies on the first day, as was the founders’ premiere in 1923. “After a few years, they had to go into exile. Looking at the books from that time, with photographic covers, it was something extraordinary. The spirit has continued over the years, we have not copied the style to the letter, but we have grown applying it in our own way,” says Terragni.
“There are publishers,” he points out, “that publish what is expected of them, and that’s fine, you can be successful and be mainstream, but in our ideology the concept is to surprise the reader who wanted to read it but didn’t know.”
Smell and exploration have been fundamental: “I remember that when publishing the Peruvian cookbook they told us: ‘what trends’, and we responded: ‘We are not, we started three years ago.’”
Of course, if there is one book by Phaidon it is The History of Art by Ernst H. Gombrich. “It changed our history, it was like an earthquake: eight million books in 40 languages.” It was conceived on the top of a London bus between Horowitz and Gombrich, another exiled Viennese.
“The secret is not what but how he explains it, it hooks you, it’s like a novel, you feel like you’re inside it. It has no expiration date.” Terragni smiles when he quotes Ferran Adrià. “We went to visit him twice to write a book and he both said no. Six months later he invited us to dinner, and we were delighted, of course. He asked us if we could work together: “Look,” he told us, “you do the books and I’ll dedicate myself to cooking.”
