Me, kaolin

Milouin invites the new protagonist of your “Me, product” section. A playful text in which a product or a living material is told in the first person in an impertinent, funny and poetic tone. Me, product.

I don't look like that, but thanks to the hand of man I become a top-of-the-range raw material. White clay, quite crumbly, I owe my name to the place of my find, in the "high hills" of a small Chinese town. And it was there that they made me, for the first time, the basic material for manufacturing the no less famous Chinese porcelain.

Thanks to many processes, I alone, supported by the know-how of the craftsman, can give it this transparent and fragile aspect which, paradoxically, is only obtained by my cooking at 1200 degrees. China was for a long time the number one with its kaolin heritage, but now I can be found everywhere. And French crockery clearly has nothing to envy its distant cousin... Limoges porcelain is just as refined and elegant.

Even if my white powder is used in medicine, cosmetics, or even in the paper industry, it is mainly for the design of luxury tableware that I find the most.

French gastronomy fully deserves it because a great dish requires excellent support. And that, the porcelain houses have understood: the technique and dexterity of the craftsmen of these institutions make me one, if not the essential component in the creation of a pure porcelain of a whiteness immaculate, almost untouchable.

Decorative accessories for large hotels or tableware for large restaurants, I don't know what to highlight. Without trying to throw powder in your eyes, it is in all simplicity that I make the happiness of lovers of the art of the table.

Text: Sonia Ben Abdeslem
Illustration: Pascal Drai