“Sample” in “books”

hoch interessant und fast schon filmisch beschrieben - die Geschichte des Porzellans. ( )

Part memoir, part travelogue, with loads of interesting history and science facts about clay—I really liked this book and learned a lot! ( )

When I plucked this lovely looking book* from the shelf in the bookshop I assumed, for no accountable reason, that it was a novel. I realised my mistake as soon as I started reading, but within a couple of paragraphs I was completely hooked. Who could possibly imagine the history of porcelain to be so interesting? A marvellous book, full of historical information and fascinating anecdotes. De Waal's enthusiasm and passion for his subject is undeniably infectious, despite the fact that reading this book is as close as I'll ever come to throwing a pot of any kind!

* hardback, well bound, good quality paper, excellent typeface, nice bookmark - all these add multiple bonus points for reading pleasure. ( )

As a ceramicist who has worked with clay for the past 25 years creating slender and delicate pots, all things white are an passion for de Waal. This book is a physical and spiritual journey to the places and origins of these materials that fuse together to create the translucent, ethereal material that is porcelain. His desire is to hold the raw materials in his own hands, to climb the hills where the white earth is dug from, to possess a pot made that place.

China was the place where porcelain was invented; the fusion of two materials kaolin and petuntse after purification, blending and firing at 1300 degrees brings forth this glass like substance. His pilgrimage starts in the city of Jingdezhen, centre of porcelain for 1000 years, but best known now for its helicopters. Modern China is an intense place, I know I have been there, and as he finds his way around the city avoiding road traffic, he realises that the city seems to built on broken pottery, stooping he picks up a 12th century shard laying on a spoil heap. All around the hillside are kilns, and the failed firings are just tossed away. This city produced thousand upon thousand of pieces of pottery for the Emperors, the final order being taken shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century. They are still making porcelain there, but not in the volume they used to, and he is there to source tiles for an exhibition too.

And so to Germany. A young alchemist called Böttger claims to have found the secret of changing other metals into gold. He couldn’t. Held in prison, he works alongside a mathematician called Tschirnhaus, and after many failures they manage to reveal the secret of making porcelain like the Chinese. Soon after producing this single white cup, Tschirnhaus dies. He wasn’t able to make gold, but the discovery of this white gold changes the fortunes of many in Europe. One inventory details a few hundred pieces of porcelain, the last time it was counted was over 35,000 items.

De Waal heads home to England, in pursuit of his final white hill. As the English potters scour the countryside in search of this white clay, necessitating a trip to the land of the Cherokee in America, the find the materials just down the road in Cornwall. Plymouth becomes the third place in the World to produce porcelain around 1000 years after the Chinese first achieved it.

This book is a blend of genres; part travelogue, part history book, semi auto-biographical and full of whimsy and occasionally random thoughts. There are accounts of his art installations and exhibitions, his first workshop on the Welsh border, his angsts of the creative process, the collectors and guardians of exquisite pieces of pottery and those that have made and lost fortunes with this white gold.

But much more than that, this is an account of his obsession with porcelain.

It sometimes feels like he has just transcribed his notes directly onto the manuscript prior to sending to the publisher, with little or no editing. Not everyone will like that style, but for me that is its allure. Like his artful pots, the writing is beautiful, quirky, flawed in parts and most importantly soars. Now he has written again, he has returned to the wheel and the white clay and is making again. ( )