Color: Celadon | Place: China

“Imagine you are an Emperor, dusted with gold, surrounded by silks, held high on palanquins, fed the most exquisite foods with jade chopsticks. Everything is precious. Would you not then yearn for something earthly and real?… Celadon, fading autumnal green-hazy yet hinting of a return to the pureness of nature and the possibility of immortality, simplicity, and integrity. It’s blandness, to a sated appetite… like a sorbet to the glutted palate.”

Celadon is a warm color described through the ages with poetic words like, calming, misty green, dreamy, sea green foam, foggy, and fading green. Known in China as mi se “mysterious color”, the pottery made with it so revered its ownership was restricted to Royalty.

Produced by firing a glaze containing varying amounts of iron oxide at a high temperature in a reducing kiln, it is hard to achieve. The cracks in the glaze, variations in color, impossible to devine in advance for such a seemingly simple hue.

Menu

Silken Tofu with Avocado

Pork Noodle Soup

Stuffed Braised Duck Breast

Stir-Fried Celery with Cashews

Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce

Rice

Melon Sorbetto with Kiwi and Clementine