The white road : journey into an obsession / Edmund de Waal.

Title:

Journey into an obsession

Author:

De Waal, Edmund

ISBN:

9780374289263

(hbk.)

0374289263

Edition:

First American edition.

Publication Info:

New York :

Description:

401 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

General Note:

Originally published: Great Britain : Chatto & Windus, 2015.

Personal Subject:

De Waal, Edmund-Travel.

Subject(s):

Porcelain -- History.

Holds: Copies (not including on-order items):

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Shelf Location	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Cheyenne Library	Book	738.209 DEWA DEWA	Biography	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted.

Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with the Amber Eyes .
In The White Road , bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history.
Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes , de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.

Author Notes

Edmund de Waal is one of the world's leading ceramic artists, and his porcelain is held in many major museum collections. His bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes has been published in thirty languages and won the Costa Biography Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, the PEN/Ackerley Prize and the Southbank Sky Arts Award for Literature, and longlisted for the Orwell Prize and BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives in London with his family.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Artist de Waal (The Hare with Amber Eyes), a potter by trade, blends art history and personal travelogue in this immersive hands-on study of porcelain and its commercial and artistic appeal over the centuries. Beginning in Jingdezhen, China, where porcelain was first fired 1,000 years ago, de Waal gradually works his way west to 18th-century Europe-specifically the German city of Dresden, and Plymouth on the South Coast of England-and eventually to Ayoree Mountain in what is now North Carolina. He enlivens his account with portraits of the people whose quirky personalities and entrepreneurial zeal advanced the manufacture of porcelain across Europe, among them mathematician Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus, who partnered with alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger to develop "a porcelain body for a pure white clay through which light can pass." De Waal punctuates his chronicle with descriptions of his own work in the medium and poetic reflections on the art form: for example, he describes the cobalt used in designs on porcelain pots as a pigment "that allows the world to be turned into stories," and the quest for a porcelain "so white and true and perfect, that the world around it is thrown into shadows." The book transforms an otherwise esoteric subject into a truly remarkable story. Agent: Felicity Bryan, Felicity Bryan Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Following up on his award-winning, internationally best-selling family history, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), ceramic artist de Waal reveals the depths and permutations of his life-shaping fascination with porcelain, which has been so maniacally treasured worldwide that it's called white gold. A potter and a scholar enthralled by old books and antique documents, de Waal brings a historian's ardor for detail and a poet's gifts for close observation and radiant distillation to this exquisite chronicle of his extensive porcelain investigations and arduous pilgrimages. He begins in China, where porcelain was paramount. He watches potters at work, and explains the long-secret chemistry responsible for porcelain's entrancing translucency. When the glowing white ceramic creations finally reached Europe, porcelain sickness quickly spread, inducing King Augustus II of Poland to acquire 35,798 pieces, while the competition to figure out how to make Western porcelain was fierce. In Dresden, de Waal tracks the efforts of seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. On home ground in England, he portrays William Cookworthy, whose porcelain discoveries helped him cope with grief. De Waal also uncovers the dark side of porcelain manufacturing, including the forced labor of prisoners at Dachau. De Waal's passionately and elegantly elucidated story of porcelain, laced with memoir and travelogue, serves as a portal into the madness and transcendence of our covetous obsession with beauty.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Porcelain is primarily white earthy minerals, but it's also alchemy; dust changed to a mystical substance that is hard, translucent, and capable of being formed into the simplest or most extravagant of shapes. Noted potter and author (The Hare with the Amber Eyes) de Waal has written an immensely enjoyable meditation on what happens when the right mix of stone and clay enter the incandescent heat of a kiln. The intricate steps involved in mining, refining, shaping, and firing first took place in China well over 1,000 years ago. The products of the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen were as precious as jade and coveted worldwide. Journeying to Jingdezhen, Dresden, South Carolina, and southwest England, de Waal tells the story of determined experimenters who reproduced the magic the Chinese had mastered. Each episode is tied to a particular personality who is traveling the white road, enthralled by the beauty of porcelain. Bankrupt Quakers, overworked Chinese clay slaves, headstrong German royals, protective Cherokee, and the anxious author all revolve through a study that culminates with an exploration of the porcelain workshop run by the SS in the concentration camp at Dachau. VERDICT This page-turning account, both sweeping and intimate, will appeal to a broad audience. [See Prepub Alert, 6/1/15.]-David McClelland, Andover, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Jingdezhen-Venice-Dublin

Prologue	p. 1
Part 1 Jingdezhen
1 On shards	p. 23
2 Sorry	p. 28
3 Mount Kao-ling	p. 34
4 Making and decorating and glazing and firing	p. 41
5 How to make big pots	p. 48
6 Obligations	p. 53
7 Factory #72	p. 56
8 Counterfeit. Forgery. Sham.	p. 65
9 Ten thousand things	p. 72
10 The monk's cap ewer	p. 76
11 I read everything. T understand Continue.	p. 86
12 Setting out	p. 92
13 Men in black	p. 101
14 The emperor's Tea Set	p. 107
Part 2 Versailles - Dresden
15 The latest news from China	p. 113
16 The porcelain pavilion	p. 121
17 Cream-coloured, provincial and opaque	p. 125
18 Opticks	p. 130
19 The first mode of formation	p. 136
20 Gifts and promises and titles	p. 142
21 The shuffle of things	p. 149
22 A path, a vocation	p. 157
23 Extraordinarily curious	p. 166
24 There is no gold	p. 171
25 'double, or even triple amount of effort'	p. 175
26 Promises, promises	p. 187
27 Half translucent and milk White, like a narcissus	p. 187
28 The invention of Saxon porcelain	p. 194
29 Porcelain rooms, porcelain cities	p. 199
30 1719	p. 209
Part 3 Plymouth
31 The Birth of English Porcelain	p. 215
32 Three Scruples make a Dram	p. 218
33 A Quaker! A Quaker! A Quirl!	p. 221
34 A greater rain	p. 225
35 Covering the ground	p. 228
36 Shillings, pebbles, or buttons	p. 232
37 Letters Edifying and Curious	p. 234
38 Readily stained m use	p. 239
39 China earth	p. 243
40 A shard, which, by leave, he sometime broke	p. 246
41 Silences	p. 248
42 Tregonning Hill	p. 251
43 Brighter in white objects	p. 256
44 Thoughts of whiteness	p. 260
Part 4 Ayoree Mountain - Etruria - Cornwall
45 An Idea of perfect Porcellain	p. 265
46 Ayoree Mountain	p. 269
47 C.F.	p. 278
48 On Englishness	p. 282
49 Endings, beginnings	p. 289
50 A cunning specification	p. 294
51 Gray's Elegy	p. 299
52 A journey into Cornwall	p. 301
53 Thoughts Concerning Emigration	p. 305
54 A road trip	p. 312
55 1790	p. 319
Part 5 London - Jingdezhen - Dachau
56 Signs & Wonders	p. 329
57 1919	p. 333
58 Red labour	p. 339
59 Bright Earth, Fired Earth	p. 343
60 What whiteness, what candor	p. 347
61 Allach	p. 358
62 False sail	p. 366
63 Correct in orientation	p. 372
64 Another witness	p. 376
65 The Boehm Porcelain Co. of Trenton, New Jersey	p. 380
Coda London - New York - London
66 Breathturn	p. 385
Further reading	p. 393
List of illustrations	p. 395
Acknowledgements	p. 399

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