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Extraordinary new non-fiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'.

In 'The White Road', bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted - and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills" - sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history.

Part memoir, part history, part detective story, 'The White Road' chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.

★Review★

"[A] shimmering paean to porcelain . . . De Waal digs deep into the substance of his live, and what he shares is precious." ―Jean Zimmerman, NPR

“De Waal is a master of telling stories through material objects. He can see a vase and not only imagine the kind of room it once inhabited but the type of woman who might have brushed her fingertips across its lip . . . It’s de Waal’s own obsession―the man counts pots when he can’t sleep at night―that infuses the narrative with a true sense of the hunt . . . He is wonderfully manic in his research . . . He allows himself to get lost for weeks, to travel someplace only to return empty-handed―which makes for a true adventure and a pleasure to read.” ―Thessaly La Force, The New Yorker

“The White Road is filled with marvelous examples of storytelling, and de Waal has a gift for inhabiting his characters. Also, the historical material is interleaved with stories from de Waal’s own life as a ceramicist, which adds an extra and very welcome dimension to the tale.”―Christina Thompson, The Boston Globe

“At once meditation, memoir, and travelogue as well as history, The White Road is one of those unclassifiable books that simply astounds with the author’s infectious love of his subject . . . De Waal’s prose is both elegant and powerful . . . Despite covering so many places, so many historical periods, and so many themes, de Waal’s beautiful narrative voice and his love for his subject manage to shape this book into an almost seamlessly formed whole. Which leaves me with my one resentment regarding The White Road: It’s damned unfair that such a distinguished artist should also be such a great writer.” ―Kevin O’Kelly, The Christian Science Monitor

“De Waal reveals the depths and permutations of his life-shaping fascination with porcelain . . . [He] brings a historian’s ardor for detail and a poet’s gifts for close observation and radiant distillation to this exquisite chronicle of his extensive porcelain investigations . . . De Waal’s passionately and elegantly elucidated story of porcelain, laced with memoir and travelogue, serves as a portal into the madness and transcendence of our covetous obsession with beauty.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“A lyrical melding of art history, memoir, and philosophical meditation . . . In short passages of allusive, radiant prose, [de Waal] chronicles his journeys in search of both the materials and the history of porcelain, discovering along the way men as obsessed as he . . . De Waal's poetically recounted journey is a revelation.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[De Waal] blends art history and personal travelogue in this immersive hands-on study of porcelain and its commercial and artistic appeal over the centuries . . . He enlivens his account with portraits of the people whose quirky personalities and entrepreneurial zeal advanced the manufacture of porcelain across Europe . . . A truly remarkable story.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An immensely enjoyable meditation on what happens when the right mix of stone and clay enter the incandescent heat of a kiln . . . Journeying to Jingdezhen, Dresden, South Carolina, and southwest England, de Waal tells the story of determined experimenters who reproduced the magic the Chinese had mastered . . . [A] page-turning account, both sweeping and intimate.” ―Library Journal

Edmund de Waal is one of the world's leading ceramic artists, and his porcelain is held in many major museum collections. His bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes has been published in thirty languages and won the Costa Biography Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, the PEN/Ackerley Prize and the Southbank Sky Arts Award for Literature, and longlisted for the Orwell Prize and BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives in London with his family.

prologue Jingdezhen – Venice – Dublin 1
part one Jingdezhen
One on shards 23
Two sorry 28
Three Mount Kao-ling 34
Four making and decorating and glazing and firing 41
Five how to make big pots 48
Six obligations 53
Seven Factory #72 56
Eight Counterfeit. Forgery. Sham. 65
Nine ten thousand things 71
Ten the monk’s cap ewer 76
Eleven I read everything. I understand. Continue. 86
Twelve setting out 92
Thirteen Men in black 101
Fourteen the emperor’s Tea Set 107
part two Versailles – Dresden
Fifteen the latest news from China 113
Sixteen the porcelain pavilion 121
Seventeen cream-coloured, provincial and opaque 125
Eighteen opticks 130
Nineteen the first mode of formation 136
Twenty gifts and promises and titles 142
Twenty-One the shuffle of things 149
Twenty-Two a path, a vocation 157
Twenty-Three extraordinarily curious 166
Twenty-Four there is no gold 171
Twenty-Five ‘double, or even triple amount of effort’ 175
Twenty-Six promises, promises 184
Twenty-Seven half translucent and milk white, like a narcissus 187
Twenty-Eight the invention of Saxon porcelain 194
Twenty-Nine porcelain rooms, porcelain cities 199
Thirty 1719 209
part three Plymouth
Thirty-One The Birth of English Porcelain 215
Thirty-Two Three Scruples make a Dram 218
Thirty-Three A Quaker! A Quaker! A Quirl! 221
Thirty-Four a greater rain 225
Thirty-Five covering the ground 228
Thirty-Six shillings, pebbles, or buttons 232
Thirty-Seven Letters Edifying and Curious 234
Thirty-Eight readily stained in use 239
Thirty-Nine china earth 243
Forty a shard, which, by leave, he sometime broke 246
Forty-One silences 248
Forty-Two Tregonning Hill 251
Forty-Three brighter in white objects 256
Forty-Four thoughts of whiteness 260
part four Ayoree Mountain – Etruria – Cornwall
Forty-Five an Idea of perfect Porcellain 265
Forty-Six Ayoree Mountain 269
Forty-Seven C.F. 278
Forty-Eight on Englishness 282
Forty-Nine endings, beginnings 289
Fifty a cunning specification 294
Fifty-One Gray’s Elegy 299
Fifty-Two a journey into Cornwall 301
Fifty-Three Thoughts Concerning Emigration 305
Fifty-Four a road trip 312
Fifty-Five 1790 319
part five London – Jingdezhen – Dachau
Fifty-Six Signs & Wonders 329
Fifty-Seven 1919 333
Fifty-Eight red labour 339
Fifty-Nine Bright Earth, Fired Earth 343
Sixty what whiteness, what candor 347
Sixty-One Allach 358
Sixty-Two false sail 366
Sixty-Three correct in orientation 372
Sixty-Four another witness 376
Sixty-Five The Boehm Porcelain Co. of Trenton, New Jersey 380
coda London – New York – London
Sixty-Six breathturn 385
Further
reading 393
List
of illustrations 395
Acknowledgements 399
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