The search for perfection: Challenging the alchemy of white gold

William Cookworthy (1705-1780) joined the often bazaar and sometimes dastardly search for the perfect formula of porcelain from his factory in SuSon Harbour in Plymouth. The long history of this search speaks to what seems to have been a broader western obsession with perfection, and a colonial drive for a perfect ‘whiteness’. This search for alchemy to create white gold is highly problematic but also may offer answers to the human drive for transformation, domination over non-human materiality, and potentially allows a reference to Carl Jung’s exploration of alchemy as equivalence to transformation of the human unconscious.
In this work, presented at ActivateCHAT (2025) I examine the history of the creation of porcelain through material experimentation. This project took me to the china clay works of South Dartmoor, to a laboratory (my studio) for grinding, mixing, testing and making, and to hot kilns for firing. Through this repetitious process, I reenacted Cookworthy’s search for white gold, embody (and resist) the drive for perfection through material processes and explore ways to situate this practice research alongside the problematic histories of ‘whiteness’ and the apparent colonial need for domination over non-human materiality. This speaks to the theme of activateCHAT in many ways. Working through the materiality of china clay and other ingredients, experimenting with the vitrifying transformative potential
of these materials, the re-enactment of the search for the perfect porcelain recipe, all
reference BUSY which, in my opinion, is accompanied by a societal compulsive cycle of not-enoughness, the drive to be more, be busier, be better. Working through the materiality porcelain will allow an attitude of slow and close attention offering new insights into the labour of making.