"It Changed How I See My Living Room" — A London Collector's Story

Sarah Thornton did not set out to become a collector of Chinese ceramics. A literary agent based in Notting Hill, she had spent twenty years surrounded by books, not pottery. Her flat — a light-filled Victorian conversion with wooden floors and white walls — was furnished in the restrained Scandinavian style that dominates London's professional interiors. There was nothing on any surface that did not serve a practical purpose.

Then, in the autumn of 2023, she bought a celadon vase. Eighteen months later, she owns four Chinese ceramic pieces, has visited Jingdezhen twice, and describes the experience as having fundamentally changed how she sees her own home.

The First Piece

“I was browsing online — not looking for anything specific — and I saw this celadon vase,” Sarah recalls. “The colour stopped me. It was this deep, quiet green, like jade but with more warmth. I'd never responded to a ceramic object before. Books, yes. Paintings, occasionally. But never pottery.”

The vase arrived wrapped in layers of tissue and silk cord. Sarah placed it on her mantelpiece — the only uncluttered surface in the flat — and found herself returning to look at it throughout the day. “It changed the room. Genuinely. This single object altered the energy of a space I'd lived in for eight years. I know that sounds dramatic, but there's no other way to describe it.”

Learning to See

What followed, Sarah says, was an education she didn't know she needed. She began reading about celadon glazes — the chemistry, the history, the centuries of refinement that produced the particular shade of green that had caught her eye. She learned about Jingdezhen and its thousand-year ceramic tradition. She discovered that the vase on her mantelpiece was made by a specific craftsman whose family had been potting for four generations.

“I think what surprised me most was the depth of knowledge behind what seemed like a simple object. The glaze recipe. The firing temperature. The specific clay body. Every decision has a reason, and the reason usually connects to centuries of accumulated understanding. Coming from the book world, I recognised that kind of deep craft immediately.”

Visiting Jingdezhen

Six months after her first purchase, Sarah booked a trip to Jingdezhen. “I know it sounds impulsive. I'm not usually impulsive. But I wanted to see where this vase came from — the actual workshop, the actual kiln.”

She spent four days in the city, visiting studios and watching craftsmen at work. She saw raw kaolin clay being refined, watched glazes being mixed and applied, and stood outside a kiln at two in the morning as a potter checked the firing through a spy-hole. “Standing in that workshop, watching someone throw a bowl on a wheel — the same wheel design, essentially, that has been used for a thousand years — I understood something about continuity that I'd never grasped from reading.”

Building a Small Collection

Sarah now owns four pieces: the original celadon vase, a blue-and-white tea jar, a small stoneware incense holder, and a porcelain brush rest that she uses daily on her desk. Each piece was chosen carefully, and each has its own place in her flat.

“I'm not interested in accumulating things for the sake of it. That's not what this is about. Each piece earns its place by doing something to the space around it — changing the light, altering the mood, giving my eye somewhere to rest. I think that's what good art does. It doesn't demand attention. It rewards it.”

Her advice to anyone considering their first piece of Chinese ceramics is characteristically direct: “Buy the thing that stops you. Not the thing that impresses you, or the thing that seems like a good investment. The thing that makes you look twice. And then learn everything you can about it. The learning is half the pleasure.”