Ceramics Books and Magazines

Author: Janet Gleeson
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$21.99~~
Buy Used: $4.55
You Save: $17.44 (79%)

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

24 reviews
Sales Rank: 414848

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 0.9

ISBN: 0446674842
Dewey Decimal Number: 738.092243214
EAN: 9780446674843

Publication Date: January 15, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Moderate / heavy cover wear; unmarked text. Ships the same or next business day with Free Tracking! We fully guarantee to ship the exact same item as listed and work hard to maintain our excellent customer service.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 16-20 of 24

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Potty About Porcelain ! December 10, 1999
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

Who ever thought a book about porcelain could be so engrossing? Ms. Gleeson has written an exciting (yes....exciting!), fascinating tale. It is a combination of science and adventure with some industrial espionage thrown in. The biographical aspects are excellent also. You get a real feel for the personalities who are portrayed in this book: the profligate king (Augustus) who is desperate for a way to finance his out-of-control spending, so he pins his hopes on alchemy!; the teenage alchemist (Johannn Bottger) who draws attention to himself with a magic trick that fools people into thinking he has found a way to create gold, and thereby gets himself locked away by Augustus until he can duplicate the feat! But Bottger was no charlatan. He really thought he could do it.... The tension builds as Augustus invests lots of money in Bottger's enterprise but starts to get impatient when he doesn't see any results.... Poor Bottger even manages to escape for a short while because he is afraid of being executed for his failure. Eventually, he saves himself by coming up with a commercially viable formula for porcelain.... but it wasn't easy! This is a relatively brief book but it is filled with many interesting characters besides the two mentioned above and the action moves around to various cities as people who have worked with Bottger try to smuggle out the secret formula and shop it around to other kings and princes...... A very enjoyable (and educational!) book.

5 out of 5 stars

Enthrallling, riveting ... porcelain? Who'd 'a thunk it? October 24, 1999
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I picked this up at a bookstall at Heathrow last week, started it and literally couldn't put it down until the end. Wow! I don't think I've given the history of porcelain five seconds' thought in my life, but while I was reading The Arcanum nothing could have struck me as more fascinating. Janet Gleeson is a born storyteller - and who'd 'a thunk *that* with a background in writing collectors' guides for porcelain and posters? Hello Hollywood - here's a movie waiting to be made! Sex, danger, intrigue, discovery, war, politics, envy, gluttony - hey, all seven deadly sins and then some. As God is my witness, I'll never ignore porcelain again!

5 out of 5 stars

incredible achievement May 12, 1999
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

A while ago I visited a museum of ceramic art and reading this book made all those porcelain objects come alive! An extremely well written, enchanting and rivetting read!

5 out of 5 stars

Little Book with a Big Story May 12, 1999
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The Arcanum lives up to every effusive word of praise that reviewers have lavished on it. Filled with quirky characters, drama, tension, and no small amount of glorious history, it reads as well if not better than Longitude, from a similar niche history category. Advised for women, men, old and young, learn something and be entertained at once. Give yourselves a treat with this one.

2 out of 5 stars

Interesting history of german porcelain making April 3, 1999
5 out of 10 found this review helpful

The Arcanum is the history of making porcelain in the seventeenth century in Germany.

The search started when an alchemist who was looking for "the philosopher's stone" to transmute base metals into gold, failed at his search but came up with the secret formula for making hardpaste porcelain in Europe for the first time. Greedy kings play a large part, and wars are an integral part of the story.

This book would definitely have benefited from the inclusion of photographs of some of the old pieces that are in museums today.

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