ArtsNational - White Gold: The Story of Porcelain

Description

The story of porcelain encompasses artistry, ingenuity, emperors, tyrants, alchemists and industrial espionage. Invented and perfected by Chinese artist-potters, porcelain was a coveted and highly prized commodity. Translucent, impervious and rare, white high-fired porcelain was the perfect ground for painted cobalt blue decoration and overglaze enamels in a lavish palette of colours. In the Middle East and the West, it inspired the maladie de porcelaine and competed with tulips and gold for precedence in the estates and palaces of the rich and powerful. Marco Polo called it porcellana (cowrie shell), and the Medici attempted to imitate it during the Renaissance. But it wasn’t until a missionary made a close study of the secrets of Chinese porcelain that the recipe escaped to the West. Coinciding with the fashion for tea, coffee and hot chocolate, Sèvres, Worcester, Chelsea and many other manufactories competed to produce the most decorative and desirable wares. Meissen’s inception in 1710 grew out of science and alchemy, as a corollary of transmuting base metals into gold. Later, Josiah Spode added bone china to the formula which, with Josiah Wedgwood’s innovations, secured Stoke-on-Trent and ceramics as a cornerstone of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.