THE WHITE ROAD – A PILGRIMAGE OF SORTS
By Edmund de Waal
Chatto & Windus, $55
British ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s previous and highly popular book, The Hare with Amber Eyes traced the ancestry of a single object through a five-generation history of the family that owned it. Similarly, The White Road retraces history, especially in China, by describing the development of porcelain.
The book is written in a personal tone and some sections read like a travel journal as the author treks through China, Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, South Carolina and Cornwall.
De Waal expresses his passion for objects by saying they speak to him in a personal and almost poetic manner:
“I hear objects. With objects it is possible not only to sound them, name them and make…
