English ceramic artist Edmund de Waal has installed his white porcelain works in prestigious museums and galleries across the world, but at heart he still thinks of himself as a potter, who apprenticed for two years before sidestepping his love of ceramics to read for a university degree in English. Under his master Geoffrey Whiting, he learned to make "pots for use... cheap enough to drop... beautiful enough to keep for ever" before he later became obsessively focused on the difficult art of throwing and glazing porcelain. The White Road is a personal and philosophical memoir of de Waal's research into the history of this traditionally treasured symbol of royalty and nobility. He journeys to the porcelain's original source in Jingdezchen, China; its first European factories in Dresden, Germany; and finally its first English manufacturing center in Cornwall. As de Waal's research and visits uncover, the first masters of porcelain were scientists, alchemists and pharmacists, rather than artists, seeking the holy grail of beauty to please their emperors and kings.
De Waal may be a potter and renowned artist, but he is also a reflective student of history, philosophy and literature. His 2013 study of his family history as told through its legacy collection of netsuke carvings, The Hare with Amber Eyes, won both the Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Book Award. The White Road again reveals de Waal to be a renaissance man, with a storytelling gift that illustrates how well-mixed and well-shaped kaolin clay, petunse stone and water could be a deserved passion of both ancient kings and modern kitchen moms. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.