The White Road

by Edmund de Waal

  This is a family journey. Thank you Ben, thank you Matthew and thank you Anna.

  This is for Sue, who has been alongside me every step of the way.

  A Note About the Author

  Edmund de Waal is one of the world’s leading ceramic artists, and his porcelain is held in many major international collections. His bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, was shortlisted for numerous prizes and won the Costa Biography Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Also by Edmund de Waal The Hare with the Amber Eyes

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyrigh Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE Jingdezhen – Venice – Dublin

  PART ONE Jingdezhen

  One on shards

  Two sorry

  Three Mount Kao-ling

  Four making and decorating and glazing and firing

  Five how to make big pots

  Six obligations

  Seven Factory #72

  Eight Counterfeit. Forgery. Sham.

  Nine ten thousand things

  Ten the monk’s cap ewer

  Eleven I read everything. I understand. Continue.

  Twelve setting out

  Thirteen Men in black

  Fourteen the emperor’s Tea Set

  PART TWO Versailles – Dresden

  Fifteen the latest news from China

  Sixteen the porcelain pavilion

  Seventeen cream-coloured, provincial and opaque

  Eighteen opticks

  Nineteen the first mode of formation

  Twenty gifts and promises and titles

  Twenty-One the shuffle of things

  Twenty-Two a path, a vocation

  Twenty-Three extraordinarily curious

  Twenty-Four there is no gold

  Twenty-Five ‘double, or even triple amount of effort’

  Twenty-Six promises, promises

  Twenty-Seven half translucent and milk white, like a narcissus

  Twenty-Eight the invention of Saxon porcelain

  Twenty-Nine porcelain rooms, porcelain cities

  Thirty 1719

  PART THREE Plymouth

  Thirty-One The Birth of English Porcelain

  Thirty-Two Three Scruples make a Dram

  Thirty-Three A Quaker! A Quaker! A Quirl!

  Thirty-Four a greater rain

  Thirty-Five covering the ground

  Thirty-Six shillings, pebbles, or buttons

  Thirty-Seven Letters Edifying and Curious

  Thirty-Eight readily stained in use

  Thirty-Nine china earth

  Forty a shard, which, by leave, he sometime broke

  Forty-One silences

  Forty-Two Tregonning Hill

  Forty-Three brighter in white objects

  Forty-Four thoughts of whiteness

  PART FOUR Ayoree Mountain – Etruria – Cornwall

  Forty-Five an Idea of perfect Porcellain

  Forty-Six Ayoree Mountain

  Forty-Seven C.F.

  Forty-Eight on Englishness

  Forty-Nine endings, beginnings

  Fifty a cunning specification

  Fifty-One Gray’s Elegy

  Fifty-Two a journey into Cornwall

  Fifty-Three Thoughts Concerning Emigration

  Fifty-Four a road trip

  Fifty-Five 1790

  PART FIVE London – Jingdezhen – Dachau

  Fifty-Six Signs & Wonders

  Fifty-Seven 1919

  Fifty-Eight red labour

  Fifty-Nine Bright Earth, Fired Earth

  Sixty what whiteness, what candor

  Sixty-One Allach

  Sixty-Two false sail

  Sixty-Three correct in orientation

  Sixty-Four another witness

  Sixty-Five The Boehm Porcelain Co. of Trenton, New Jersey

  CODA London – New York – London

  Sixty-Six breathturn

  Further reading

  List of illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  A Note About the Author

  Also by Edmund de Waal

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2015 by Edmund de Waal

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2015 by Chatto & Windus, Great Britain

  Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2015

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  De Waal, Edmund, author.

  The white road: journey into an obsession / Edmund de Waal. — First American edition.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-374-28926-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-70909-9 (e-book) 1. Porcelain—History. 2. De Waal, Edmund—Travel. I. Title.

  NK4370.D45 2015

  738.209—dc23

  2015022207

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  eISBN 9780374709099