With a trajectory that began in the Chinese town of Jingdezhen over a thousand years ago, porcelain is a material that has obsessed potter and author EDMUND DE WAAL for decades. De Waal decided at the age of five that he would be a potter, having seen a particular white Chinese pot.

“It’s an inscrutable material in the sense that it comes from earth but seems to aspire to something else. It seems closer to glass – closer to air – than the earth. So to me it’s utterly about a moment of alchemical change.”

His own meditative works are very still and self-contained pieces in ghostly colours, described by himself as joining the Chinese Song dynasty with the simplicities of Bauhaus. De Waal is represented in this sale with Group of Vesssels 1964 (est. £4,000-6,000) in a range of white glazes and Tall Jar (est. £4,000-6,000) and Jar (est. £4,000-6,000) in the pale celadon green of Korean dishes.