Description

In this volume, Edmund de Waal travels the globe to tell the story of his obsession with porcelain, or ‘white gold’, and the lure it held for the Europeans who encountered it: from Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century China, via the palaces of Versailles and Dresden, to the chemist shops of 18th-century Plymouth, the settlements of the Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, and the darkest moments of 10th-century history. Within all this is an intimate memoir of the author’s life as a potter, and his deepening understanding of the material he has worked with for over 45 years.