Este and the rest

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Anita Nair:

One of the joys of my Sunday is to spend some time with my porcelain. During the week, my day is so pressed with all I have to do and who I have to be that they are relegated to the back of my mind. But as there are Sunday painters, I am a Sunday porcelain aficionado.

I don’t actually file or catalog the few pieces I own. First I wipe the dust off carefully. I have to do this as neither my family nor household help share my enthusiasm for porcelain. The former see it as boring and the latter as too much work. Then there is also the fear of breakage. But there is a certain pleasure to this as well. For one of the joys of porcelain is its tactile charm. Like the swish of silk so the smooth cool touch of porcelain.

There is nothing more to be done then but gaze. As I would perhaps a flower or a cloud. It is a distanced passion but it is one that suffuses me with a certain joy. I wish I could date my passion for china. Sometimes I think it was ignited by a writing table in my grandmother’s house. The table itself had nothing to redeem it from the ordinary. But it had three drawers with white ceramic knobs. Ever so often, I would caress the knob as if it were a kitten. Perfectly contoured to fit within my palm, the knob, cool and sleek stoked a fervor that would rule the rest of my life. My heart gleamed... It wasn’t as if there was a method to this madness. I didn’t acquire full dinner services nor was I a true collector in that sense. Going by crests and insignias...mostly what I was attracted to were bits and pieces and then the china found me rather than vice versa. When I first moved to Bangalore 19 years ago, in a neglected corner of an antique shop I chanced upon remnants from an Edward VIII Coronation breakfast set. I knew then what a magpie must feel.

In an antique shop in Sussex , I found a Wedgwood plate. A wooded shack along the Seine yielded an egg cup. In Amsterdam a box. In Krakow , a tooth pick holder. In Copenhagen, a sugar bowl from a tea service, a gravy boat from a dinner service... over the years my collection has grown, but I was to never know the fullness of desire until in Padua in Italy, I walked into a friend’s home.

Nothing had prepared me for the understated charm of Este. Intricately patterned with delicate and light rococo swirls, the beauty of Este lay in that it was white on white. My heart gleamed again and again.

The tradition of pottery in Este is ancient. The style itself as seen in some of the typical Este ware seems drawn from the richly embellished bronze urns the nobility of Paleoveneti [Celtic people from the 8th century BC], used to preserve the ashes of their interred family. However what could have led to the pottery making itself lay in the fact that Este is very rich in a very special kind of clay called Kaolin which is perfect for fine bone china.While the typical Este pottery is either all white, or blue and white or white with a special flower and ribbon pattern in dark green, yellow, light brown and dark red, since the 18th Century, a special white pottery that incorporated several Neo Classical art elements came into fashion and it was this I was smitten by.

One of the most ancient and historical china and pottery manufactures in Este was called ‘capauni’. Their mark was “Capuani. Vecchia Este” (Old Este) and bore a five pointed crown. Set up at the end of the 17th century, the ownership had been controlled by the same family to the 1960s. Since then disease and death had worked its way into the family stilling the production. How could it be?

I grieved...

On a whim, my friend Francesca and I decided to go exploring.

“Don’t be too disappointed,” she warned. “I don’t know if the Capuani production still continues...”

Perhaps on every piece of Este white pottery, an invisible hand writes the name of the person whom it shall go to. For we did find the mark of Capuani. The new owner Dall’Angelo had bought the moulds from the wife of the last descendant of the family and continued with the ancient production in an industrial shed.

Spilling out of shelves and nudging each other was a veritable cornucopia of Este ceramic ware: Plates, full sets of them; and cups and saucers, wine flagons and bon bon dishes, gravy boats and sugar bowls, tureens and serving dishes, jugs and platters; little statues, chandeliers, candle holders, tiny corner stands... all white on white and each exquisite.

I wrapped my hand around a white candle stand cast with white flowers and fruit, grape leaves on a frond and felt again what has come to mean the pull of china for me. Smooth, cold, and perfectly.