The story of your plate
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What can we tell about a society from the plates, bowls and cups it uses?
In this programme Ruth Alexander learns about the history of pottery, from early earthenware to the porcelain discovered by ancient China, known as ‘white gold’.
Professor of archaeology, Joanita Vroom from Leiden University in the Netherlands explains why every pot has a story to tell.
Historian Professor Suzanne Marchand from Louisiana State University in the United States picks up the story of porcelain in the 18th century. Such was its value that it prompted numerous failed attempts, theft and even imprisonment of those who knew the secret recipe.
Ruth visits the Wedgwood factory and museum collection in North Staffordshire in the English Midlands. V&A curator Kate Turner explains how the company’s founder, Josiah Wedgwood, changed dinnerware tastes once again – catering to an emerging consumer class looking for affordable ways to decorate their home. Ruth tours the factory and meets Emma Glynn, Creative Director of Wedgwood to discuss the challenges in today’s market.
Produced by Beatrice Pickup
(Image: a potter throwing a plate on a potter's wheel. Credit: Getty Images/BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game, |
| 0:05.9 | a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible |
| 0:10.7 | story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:15.1 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:26.2 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:43.1 | In this kitchen cupboard is my rather eclectic collection of crockery. |
| 0:48.7 | Some fine china plates of Swedish design, unfortunately some chipped. |
| 0:52.6 | A set of two English mugs given to me by my mum. |
| 0:56.6 | A couple of pretty old bowls given away by someone in a nearby street, basically all sorts. And every piece here is part of a story that |
| 1:02.7 | stretches back thousands of years. In this episode of the food chain from the BBC World Service |
| 1:08.7 | with me, Ruth Alexander, we're going to tell that story, |
| 1:12.6 | of my plates and yours. You'll hear about the so-called precious white gold of China. The medieval |
| 1:19.6 | scrambled to discover its secret ingredients and the mass market business opportunities that that |
| 1:26.3 | unlocked. |
| 1:35.3 | I have a beautiful tableware set that I inherited from my aunt, |
| 1:44.1 | and it's a tableware set from the 1950s, produced by the porcelain factory in Germany, Arzberg. |
| 1:56.1 | And it was a table where set that even won a prize in 1957 at the Trianaela in Milan in Italy. |
| 1:59.5 | So it won a golden medal at that time. |
| 2:03.1 | So my aunt was very proud of this beautiful porcelain tableware set. So I'm also still very happy to use it in her honour, I have to say. |
| 2:11.1 | This is Joannita Fromm, and her appreciation of old pots reaches back much further than the |
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