Utz Utz collects Meissen porcelain with a passion His collection which he has protected and enlarged through both World War II and Czechoslovakia s years of Stalinism numbers than pieces all cram
Utz collects Meissen porcelain with a passion His collection, which he has protected and enlarged through both World War II and Czechoslovakia s years of Stalinism, numbers than 1,000 pieces, all crammed into his two room Prague flat Utz is allowed to leave the country each year, and although he has considered defection, he always returns He cannot take his preciouUtz collects Meissen porcelain with a passion His collection, which he has protected and enlarged through both World War II and Czechoslovakia s years of Stalinism, numbers than 1,000 pieces, all crammed into his two room Prague flat Utz is allowed to leave the country each year, and although he has considered defection, he always returns He cannot take his precious collection with him, but he cannot leave it, either And so Utz is as much owned by his porcelain as it is owned by him, as much of a prisoner of the collection as of the Communist state.A fascinating, enigmatic man, Kaspar Utz is one of Bruce Chatwin s finest creations And his story, as delicately cast as one of Utz s porcelain figures, is unforgettable.
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[PDF] Utz | by ✓ Bruce Chatwin
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Bruce Chatwin
Charles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill 1982 In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93 year old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted I ve always wanted to go there, Bruce told her So have I, she replied, go there for me Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram Have gone to Patagonia He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia 1977 This work established his reputation as a travel writer Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin s book It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalised Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa For The Songlines 1987 , a work combining fiction and non fiction, Chatwin went to Australia He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man s personal story He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill 1982 was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history Utz 1988 , was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death from AIDS in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.