One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Pizza Box Art
Most people throw out pizza boxes when they have finished the last slice of deliciousness, but not Scott Weiner, the man best known for his pizza obsession and walking tours of New York pizzeria's. Weiner is the owner of the Guinness World Record's largest collection of pizza boxes (over 650), has shared his collection through his art book Viva La Pizza: the Art of the Pizza Box, and now pizza-lovers can see his cardboard boxes as art at a gallery in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Weiner picked the 12 pieces in this collection from America and Italy for their unusual design and the fact that they weren't made for a specific company. The collection features familiar pizzeria images like a quaint Italian town and a gondolier on a canal in Venice. But Weiner's favorite piece is probably the drawing of a knock-off Homer and Bart Simpson making pizza in an oven.
"I think anything to do with pizza is attractive because everyone speaks the language of pizza," Weiner told The Daily Meal. "Something like a pizza box is something you don't have to be an art history major to look at and enjoy."
Oh, and what does Wiener do about grease-spot stains? Most of the boxes he picked were clean, but Wiener did say that if necessary, he used polyurethane to hide the evidence.
You can see "Viva La Pizza: The Art of the Pizza Box" at the Melville House Gallery/Bookstore in Dumbo from now until the end of March.
Joanna Fantozzi is an Associate Editor with The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @JoannaFantozzi