Arcanum: mapping 18th-century European porcelain was an exhibition held in 2005 at the National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff. It coincided with the reconfiguration of their vast and inimitable porcelain collection donated by Victorian banker, Wilfred De Winton. I wanted to tell the stories of porcelain; why it was made and who it was for, about taste, use and display and how they intersect. I wanted to give the feeling that stories are generative, each leading to another, overlapping and contradicting each other, but allowing for moments of clarity. To do so, I chose specific pieces from De Winton’s collection and displayed them in particular ways to bring them into a conversation and examine the question of display itself. I also made my own table-full of porcelain: dishes in an array of whites, a scattering of marks and gilding. These marks map my own life as maker and collector and curator of porcelain stories.
