The White Road
a pilgrimage of sorts
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The White Road
Narrated by:
Michael Maloney
Buy Now for £9.48
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Narrated by:
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Michael Maloney
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By:
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Edmund de Waal
** Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 **
‘Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first’
A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain – translucent, luminous, white.
Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times.
In these intimate and compelling encounters with the people and landscapes who made porcelain, Edmund de Waal enriches his understanding of this rare material, the ‘white gold’ he has worked with for decades.
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Critic reviews
Sweeping in scope ... intimate in detail ... The White Road is a mesmirising and finely wrought work. It is also a cautionary tale about the price of beauty pursued at any cost. (Ekow Eshun)
I loved almost every word of de Waal's book. ... De Waal is intimate with the very stuff that he has tranformed so beautifully into pots; intimate with its history; intimate with the characters who make up its story. And yes, by the end, if this sort of elbow-grabbing book works for you - which it did triumphantly for me - he in intimate with his readers too (A. N. Wilson)
Graceful and insightful… this book is certainly the finest account of the many meanings of porcelain to the modern world that I have read (Tristram Hunt)
This book is a history of the making of porcelain – its discovery and rediscovery – from ancient China to Dachau. ... Mixed in with this history is a kind of autobiographical account of de Waal's own work. He says he thinks with his hands, and he is amazingly skilled at telling us what is happening as he feels the clay, turns the wheel, unloads the kiln. (A. S. Byatt)
This is the most personal sort of book one can read: an account of a love affair. ... You learn everything you could possibly need to know about porcelain. ... You don't want to stop reading, because de Waal, with his sharp curator's eye, has excellent judgment when it comes to showing readers things that they will find fascinating, funny or moving.
De Waal writes beautifully, wears his learning lightly and charmingly and makes sure anyone and everyone will care deeply about the white stuff too. (Robert Bound)
Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes, the story of a collection of netsuke owned by his relatives, was a surprise bestseller. ... This account of china clay should claim an even greater readership. It deserves to. It is an even better book. I already have it marked down as my book of the year.
Edmund de Waal's poetic book is like a porcelain cup richly and delicately painted with the story of a mysterious substance and an alchemical art that have combined to enrich, enchant and sometimes ruin aficionados and artists alike.
This is a haunting book, a book that amasses itself piece by piece, gaining in weight. (Olivia Laing)
Edmund de Waal has a way of making you care about handmade ceramics in a way no other writer does (Ysenda Maxtone Graham)
What a wonderful journey
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The best parts of the book are those that teem with insights, varied facts and details of the history of porcelain and its manufacture: from the Chinese Emperors ordering tens and tens of thousands of matching plates, dishes and cups to Himmler's love of the pure 'undegenerate' white porcelain made in Dachau Concentration camp, to Chairman Mau's tea-set and the sealing of the seam which produced the clay after his death so that no duplicate could ever be made. The background to Wedgwood's spectacular success - which blackened the air of Stoke - is detailed from his buying up a complete obsolete wooden ship to provide fuel for his kilns to his acute business sense which made him send gifts of Queens Ware to Queen Charlotte.De Waal presents the seductive, sublime perfection of the finished artefacts as vividly as the terrible sufferings of the armies of oppressed people who produced it - including the skilled kiln packers, scrapers, those who wrecked their lungs grinding pigments or those whose homes were burned when kilns caught fire - and the worker who threw himself into the kiln rather than face the consequences of his imperfect firing.
The least interesting parts are those in which de Waal indulges in extensive analysis of whiteness and his obsessional pursuit of it. A little of that goes a long way. I found the narrator Michael Maloney, who has also read de Waal's Hare with Amber Eyes, far too irritatingly reverential, too exaggeratedly wonder-filled. There's clearly a spiritual element to de Waal and his pots - the sub title is 'A pilgrimage of Sorts' - and Maloney wants to convey this through his narration. But it's excessive - there's enough passion and ecstasy in the words without it being injected into every sentence.
But don't let that put you off - there's nothing else out there like this book - or quite like de Waal - and it's well worth listening to.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being!
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de Waal explores the Chinese development of porcelain as a remarkable marketable material and examines its production in Jingdezhen alongside its discovery and use in a range of other settings from the Appalachians to Germany to England and back to China. The social history is insightful regarding the punishingly hard work, the ill-health, and the secret recipes that abound wherever this unique (set of) substance(s) is used.
de Waal's thorough and personalised research invites our scrutiny - whether in China where it is produced by specialised local factories and kilns or in the Third Reich where the Nazis promoted it as a manifestation of Aryan white purity. Mao too gets a mention, highlighting how brutal dictators have sought to control this substance and how the craftsmen on the ground have responded and adapted to their demands.
de Waal interfaces these fascinating stories with his own craft and socio-historic exhibition. Full of wonderful enlightening facts and fictions...
Journey into white
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"Happiness writes white" Montherlant
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Fascinating
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