The ceramicist goes on a pilgrimage to visit the three most famous sites in the history of porcelain – Jingzedhen,Dresden and CornwallEdmund de Waal is a potter, a successful ceramicist who has worked with porcelain for 25 years. The thought behind The White Road is given on page three. “It’s really quite simple, and a pilgrimage of sorts,to beginnings, a chance to walk up the mountain where the white soil comes from …I enjoy a plan to fade to three places where porcelain was invented, and reinvented,three white hills in China and Germany and England.” Three white hills, each yielding a white object.It does sound simple, and elegant; even,dare one say, spiritual. A white road. But although De Waal sticks to the plan, or it’s hard to know what the book is: is it a quest,a biography, a history, and a travelogue or a bit of all? Certainly a bit of all.
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Source: theguardian.com