June 2024
By James Woodward
I came across A White Road by Edmund de Waal while thinning my bookshelves for a donation to my local charity shop and have tried to ‘get into’ it on two or three occasions. Don’t ask me why, but now the moment had come.
The first thing that struck me was the graceful fluency of the prose and its blend of memoir and history. The author is a potter who shares his lifelong passion with porcelain or “white gold”. De Waal brings his 40 years experience of working with clay to this story of five journeys, showing the reader where porcelain was refined, collected and celebrated to ask the question: “What is the mysterious allure of this substance?”
From London to China, Germany and beyond, the journeys are skilfully and intimately recorded. This reader felt he was with de Waal in the moments of discovery that are intertwined with history, desire, discovery and revelation.
My own first encounter with de Waal’s work was at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge many years ago, and then locally here in Salisbury, more recently and regularly at the New Arts Centre where his work is displayed in the Artists House. They are pieces of disarming simplicity and beauty.
The history is complex and arresting though it is not always easy to follow. The subtitle of the book, A Pilgrimage of Sorts, offers De Waal an opportunity to tell his own story as a potter. While these snippets are the cause of some irritation to other reviewers I appreciated the transparent honesty of a life opened up to the incompleteness and flaws that all of us often deny or embrace. Texture, colour, imperfection and flaws are all part of the complexities of our lives.
I feel that de Waal’s fragility and honesty bring his art to life. He names the freneticism of his own addiction to busyness. He shows us what happens when we get side-tracked and often lost within the distractions of learning and research. He confesses that he drinks too much coffee and doesn’t get enough sleep. His desk manages to lose valuable papers. His breathless distraction may be annoying for some but for my eye and heart it added to the soil and depth of what he sees and captures and creates. We all get lost and struggle to find the right words to describe the moment.
His agitation is a gift for his art and for any careful reader in search of a bit of uncomfortable truth about the self in search of happiness.
We do not understand who we are or the journey we are embark on by seeking to control or even eliminate ambiguity, paradox and contradiction.
The journey of discovery here in all its breathless adventure is captivating. It tells the story of porcelain with skill and from a hinterland of fastidious research. It is a long book but worth the effort. Any reader will marvel at the energy and skill of this writer and potter – and long for a small piece of his work which are truly immaculate in their fragile beauty.
For those who imagine that art is for those who are a little removed from the present struggles of a fragile world, de Waal brings his sensitivities and wisdom into play with radical skill.
At the end of this book we land firmly in the 20th century. De Waal shows his reader the connections between international modernism in Russia, England and the Bauhaus in Germany. He narrates his shocking discovery that Allach porcelain was produced by inmates of Dachau and he draws attention to Hilter looking at a Nazi bambi figurine.
Art is never neutral in the hands of human beings. Our capacity to manipulate is shocking. In this story the skill, ingenuity and beauty are held in tension with disgust, sorrow and anger. And so our ability to destroy, marginalise and dehumanise continue with its bloody consequences. What will save us? When will we learn?
In a world full of too many words and not always the right ones, how do we nurture beauty within ourselves and others?
Inevitably, I want to make some connections between my present role in education and ministerial formation and the work of artists and writers.
I am immediately struck by the inevitability of the sheer untidiness of all of our lives but especially for those who seek to grasp some shape and meaning and truth. We do not understand who we are or the journey we are embark on by seeking to control or even eliminate ambiguity, paradox and contradiction. There is truth in the shades of grey and the stumbling attempts to express or name that which is essential for our well-being.
It takes time — for some a lifetime — to apprehend, understand and express what our road and journey has shown us. Giving a little bit more space to the brokenness of our lives might be part of the creation of truth and beauty to live and die by.
There is a beauty in the prose of this book which leaves me yearning for more beauty. This is essentially a spiritual task and one which cannot easily be manufactured or organised. In a world full of too many words and not always the right ones, how do we nurture beauty within ourselves and others? What kind of space would help us to see and feel and apprehend the awesome creativity within each of us and is so amazingly offered and shared through the work of artists, musicians, playwrights, and poets?
At the heart of this book, I think there are two key elements to the spiritual search for truth: authenticity and enlightenment. The first is the pace by which we move in order to connect. We might just need to slow down to allow new things to appear and make different kinds of connections.
To do this we need to stop and look and notice. De Waal above all us shows us in this journey how to notice. What might follow from this noticing might just be a key that opens unexpected doors of perception and action.
I am of course glad that this book wasn’t slipped into the charity shop bag. Now – who to hand it onto?
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The Revd Canon James Woodward is Principal of Sarum College. This article has been adapted from the original which appeared on James Woodward’s website.
James is co-leading the day course, Environment, Art Theology & Action on 18 September 2024.
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