Art and euphemisms

This excerpt is from a new book on the history and allure of porcelain:

On my voyage into porcelain, I come across a reference to one of my favourite designers from the Bauhaus and his work for the Allach porcelain factory. As I don’t know it – there is a plenitude of German factories – I’m intrigued and buy a book on this Allach Porzellan. It arrives a week later, a small black hardback with a photo of a porcelain statue of Athena on the front. It is in English, published by Tony L Oliver, from a suburban street in Egham, Surrey, in 1970. 

“The unique circumstances that prevailed in Germany … made it possible for the very best artists, designers, potters, and all persons associated with the manufacture of fine porcelain, to be taken from the many world-famous factories that existed in Germany at that time, such as Dresden, Berlin, Rosenthal etc, and employed at the previously unknown factory at Allach. It was this unique concentration of talent made available for its production that enabled Allach porcelain to be of such a high quality, and consequently highly desirable …”

That long, stately sentence, as carefully crafted as any in the finest catalogue raisonne', describes the staff of the Nazi porcelain factory at Dachau.

Edmund de Waal’s The White Road: A Pilgrimage of Sorts is published by Chatto & Windus. The story, in The Guardian is here.