Despite its winding economic narrative (and piles of manufacturing statistics), “Porcelain” is rarely a grind.Ms Marchand writes wittily about subjects from bourgeois views on tableware to Weimar advertising,veering away from tea sets and vases when she spies an interesting vignette.“Fox tossing”, she relates, was a popular pastime for 18th-century courtiers (the animals were hurled into the air until they died).King Frederick the Great of Prussia recruited hundreds of invalids from a state hospital literally to sniff out illegal coffeeroasters in Berlin and Potsdam.The porcelain-makers themselves were often as fascinating as Bottger.After running away from home to become a cowboy, for instance, Philipp Rosenthal made a fortune in porcelain―before being ruined by the Nazis.Ordinary workers led colourful lives too.One report of 1796 describes how employees at a firm in Furstenberg drank schnapps at work or skived off to go hunting.Their successors in the 1940s spent their time dodging Allied bombs and repairing shattered windows.Today German porcelain-makers face different threats.Chinese imports are undercutting them.Tastes have evolved: polystyrene cups have long replaced elegant coffee sets in many situations.Between 2006 and 2014 alone 190 German porcelain firms closed.
