TAASA CERAMICS STUDY GROUP, NSW – TAASA Review September 2018

19 May 2018 Symposium -Travelling Edmund De Waal’s White Road: The Development of Porcelain in China and Europe A number of guest speakers explored this topic, inspired by Edmund de Waal’s exploration of the history of porcelain in his latest book The White Road.

Iain Clark offered a definition of porcelain, comparing soft and hard paste examples, and talked about the history of the porcelain city of Jingdezhen.

Margaret White discussed Chinoiserie, the decorative style which swept Europe around the mid-18th century, and the way in which the obsession with Chinese and Japanese porcelain impacted not only in the Royal Courts of Europe but on society in general. Elizabeth Ramsden took up the porcelain story in her account of how the secret of making true porcelain was desperately pursued in various European ceramic centres, finally succeeding in Saxony in the early 18th century...