Edmund de Waal’s beautifully illustrated survey covers around 4000 years of ceramic invention. Entries are arranged alphabetically, throwing up some intriguing juxtapositions: an Abydos hedgehog jar from 18th dynasty Egypt appears opposite a commemorative plate by Mikhail Adamovich issued to mark the 5th anniversary of the Red Army in 1923; a 4000-year-old earthenware jar with shamanic decoration from Gansu province in china faces a figurative pot made by Paul Gauguin in the Marquesas Islands in 1895. It’s an arrangement that makes the point, perhaps unintentionally, that potters throughout the millennia have used similar skills and techniques for broadly similar purposes and effects – ceramics, despite its close ties with industry, remains, as an art, peculiarly close to its origins.

Phaidon | hardback |ISBN: 9780714847993