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Willan (Anne) Papers
2018.M.15
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Contributing Institution:
Special Collections
Title: Anne Willan papers
Creator:
Willan, Anne
Identifier/Call Number: 2018.M.15
Physical Description:
178.63 linear feet
(224 boxes, 14 flat file folders. Computer media: 14.86 GB [32,477 files])
Date (inclusive): 1570-2018
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Abstract: The papers of Anne Willan, a British-American expert in French gastronomy, provide a comprehensive survey of the operations
of the École de cuisine La Varenne founded by Willan in Paris in 1975 and of Willan's writings and TV programs. The papers
consist of correspondence, brochures, drafts, typescripts, press clippings, photographs, videos, and electronic records. The
archive also includes drawings, ephemera, manuscripts and prints collected by Willan and her husband Mark Cherniavsky. Dating
from the 16th to the late 20th century, these works illuminate the preparation and consumption of food and its display in
England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Language of Material: Collection material is in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Anne Willan papers, 1570-2018, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2018.M.15.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2018m15
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Anne Willan and Mark Cherniavsky. Acquired in 2018.
Karen Meyer-Roux processed the archive in November 2019-Febuary 2020 and May-August 2021.
Digital materials were processed by Laura Schroffel in 2018. Files require further processing before access copies can be
made available.
Conservation work was performed in 2020-2021 by Mark Benson.
For rare books and other works collected by Willan and Cherniavsky search the
Anne Willan and Mark Cherniavsky Gastronomy Collection in the
online catalog of the Getty Research Library.
For rare books, prints and other works that illuminate the consumption and display of food, also see the
Festival collection at the Getty Research Library.
Further related correspondence can be found in:
Papers of Julia Child, 1925-1993, TSchlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Studies, Harvard University.
Papers of Simone Beck, 1920-1993, The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University.
Arranged in four series:
Series I. General records, 1954-2015, undated;
Series II. École de cuisine La Varenne records, 1935-2018, bulk 1975-2018;
Series III. Writings and TV programs, 1961-2015;
Series IV. Anne Willan and Mark Cherniavsky gastronomy collection,
1570-2015.
Scope and Content of Collection
The papers of Anne Willan provide a comprehensive survey of the operations of the École de cuisine La Varenne founded by Willan
in Paris in 1975 and whose programs she also developed in Burgundy, West Virginia, and California. The school's records consist
of brochures, correspondence, newsletters, recipes and menus, press clippings, films, photographs, and electronic records.
Willan's writings, whose press coverage is included in the papers, are well documented by drafts, typescripts, proofs, research
files, electronic records and annotated copies of the publications. Documentation relating to the TV programs produced by
Willan consist of full runs of videocassettes, correspondence and clippings.
The archive includes drawings, ephemera, manuscripts and prints collected by Willan and her husband Mark Cherniavsky. Dating
from the 16th to the late 20th century, these works illuminate the preparation and consumption of food and its display in
England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Biographical / Historical Note
A few days before the École de cuisine La Varenne opened in Paris on the rue Saint-Dominique near Les Invalides in November
1975, the American food critic Craig Claiborne gave his blessing to the new cooking school in a
New York Times article. Notwithstanding the smell of fresh paint and the necessity to make his way over the newly installed telephone lines,
Claiborne described his visit to the establishment as uplifting. Named after the French cook François-Pierre de la Varenne
(1618-1678), the school was from the onset endowed with the financial support and logistical advice of culinary experts Julia
and Paul Child, James Beard, Simone "Simca" Beck, and that of Nick Brown—the brother of J. Carter Brown, director of the US
National Gallery of Art. The cooking school benefited from the unwavering partnership of its director, Anne Willan, with her
husband Mark Cherniavsky, a World Bank economist and a collector of antiquarian books. Willan ensured the continuing success
of La Varenne and the culinary programs she directed in Paris, Burgundy, West Virginia, and later Santa Monica, California.
In 2014, Willan was awarded the rank of
Chevalier of the
Légion d'Honneur for her work over several decades on the promotion of French gastronomy.
Anne Willan was born on January 26, 1938, in Yorkshire, raised in a house near Newcastle surrounded by wheat fields, cattle,
and church towers that could be seen over the hills in the distance. Her childhood memories are filled with freshly baked
crisp ginger biscuits, tasty bacon, egg pie and pig lardon, with Thursday being the "baking day, the best day of the week."
After receiving her master's degree in Economics from Girton College at the University of Cambridge, she pursued an advanced
course at the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery in London. Willan credits her restlessness to her adventurous and well-traveled
maternal grandfather, whose wealth also helped finance some of her initiatives. Instead of returning to Yorkshire after completing
her studies, she moved to Paris in the winter of 1963 and went on to earn a Grand Diplôme at the École Le Cordon Bleu. Willan
was then hired by Florence and Gérald Van der Kemp to help with their entertainment efforts related to raising funds for the
restoration of the Château de Versailles. After a stint as a
Gourmet Magazine employee in New York, Willan became a food editor for
The Washington Star, and began writing cookbooks, developing a passion for food writing.
Willan's move to the United States was prompted by the appearance in her life of the cultured and worldly Mark Cherniavsky,
whom she met while in Paris and whom she married on July 9, 1966. Born in Suffolk, England in 1937, Cherniavsky was the son
of a Canadian from Vancouver and of a Russian-born cellist. He was raised in England, France and Canada, and educated at the
University of Oxford. After briefly working for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Istanbul and then the Christian Michelsen
Institute in Paris, he became an economist with the World Bank in Washington, DC in 1965. Cherniavsky's studies and career
took Willan and their two children to Boston, Luxembourg and then Paris, where Cherniavsky joined the World Bank's Paris office
from 1975 to 1986. After 1986, Cherniavsky returned briefly to work at the World Bank's office in Washington before taking
an early retirement the following year. He then dedicated himself entirely to the activities of La Varenne and to his collecting.
Cherniavsky was a long-time collector of rare books, gathering antiquarian cookbooks, travel books, and associated texts,
eventually amassing one of the world's largest private collections of antique cookbooks. The oldest book in his collection
was an early edition from 1491 of Johannes Cassianus's
De institutis coenobiorum (On the Management of Monastic Communities), which describes fasting and feasting within a monastery. The pride of Cherniavsky's collection is a copy of the
Opera by Bartolommeo Scappi, who served as private cook to Pope Pius V. Scappi's
Opera is marked by its authoritative didactic and expansive text (444 leaves or 888 pages), the harmonious layout of the Renaissance
printing type, and its beautiful engravings that illuminate the preparation and serving of food at the papal court. Furthermore,
these writings helped Willan find and test recipes and learn about the history of gastronomy, which were incorporated into
the curriculum of La Varenne. Cherniavsky and Willan naturally selected, for their collection, writings that were written
in languages they were fluent in. This led to the focus on French and English cookbooks.
Anne Willan's ambition when creating La Varenne was sparked by her negative experience at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the venerable
school founded in 1895. A typo in Willan's name in the certificate of the Grand Diplôme had been the final blow. Willan's
desire was to create an alternative path. Her concept for La Varenne was to teach the practice of food preparation in a setting
encouraging dialogues and questioning, an approach that at the time had been discouraged by the Cordon Bleu master chefs.
Unlike at Le Cordon Bleu, Willan wanted to use the highest quality and freshest ingredients in the cooking classes, a practice
which eventually became a source of financial difficulties in the accounting books of La Varenne. She also wanted to promote
the use of food processors, such as the Cuisinart designed by Carl Sontheimer, which at the time was shunned by the famed
school. She incorporated down-to-earth approaches in classes, such as the use of an overhead mirror to facilitate the viewing
of the chefs' techniques. Great emphasis was placed on the teaching of simple technical gestures, such as the proper cutting
of an onion. The school offered a bilingual training program, which facilitated exposure of the program to students from
abroad. Primarily aimed at students who would go on to become chefs and professionals in the food industry, the school's recruitment
of trainees and interns to assist in writing recipes and cookbooks also helped mentor many of the future leading writers of
major food publications in the United States.
In 1982, Willan and Cherniavsky purchased a weekend retreat for themselves and their two children a two-hour drive from Paris
near Villecien, Burgundy: the Château du Feÿ. Beginning in 1988, some of the programming of La Varenne was transferred there.
After the closure of the school's Paris location in 1990, a large portion of La Varenne's instruction was relocated in 1991
to Le Feÿ. Beginning in 1991, Willan also taught in television programs and cooking demonstrations at
The Greenbrier in West Virginia. She became a prolific and popular author of cookbooks as well. In 2007, Willan and Cherniavsky decided
to sell the Château du Feÿ and to move to Santa Monica, California. There, Willan pursued—instead of a full-fledge accredited
program—the organization of cookery demonstrations with chefs established in California as well as her ongoing passion in
food writing.
Sources consulted:
Claiborne, Craig. "Upstairs: A new school teaches distinctive cooking,"
The New York Times, November 5, 1975.
Willan, Anne.
One Soufflé at a Time: A Memoir of Food and France. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013.
Open for use by qualified researchers, with the following exceptions: restrictions apply to items that are fragile and items
that have third-party privacy concerns. Born digital content will be made available on-site only, through the digital preservation
repository. Born digital and audiovisual content is unavailable until reformatted. Contact reference for reformatting.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Cooking schools
Cooks -- Archives
Gastronomy
Administrative records
Prints
Prints -- Collectors and collecting
Videotapes
DVDs
Floppy disks
Videocassettes
Manuscripts
Illustrated menus
Recipes
Correspondence
Clippings (information artifacts).
Audiocassettes
Black-and-white prints (photographs)
Born digital
Willan, Anne -- Correspondence
Cherniavsky, Mark, 1937-2017 -- Correspondence
Child, Julia -- Correspondence
École de cuisine La Varenne