Food and Ceramics: Alchemy of Fire

Join Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil for a double lecture and afternoon tea about food and ceramics.

Ceramics and food create magic – both food and ceramics come about by a type of alchemy every time a pot or a dinner is created with the application of concentrated heat. The origins of cooking and ceramics both preceded writing, and no anthropologist is certain when and where they originated. The controlled management of fire – which requires collective memory and group-level co-operation – came about between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago, becoming common after 200,000 years before our time.

This wide-ranging lecture explores the connection between food preparation and ceramics over time. From Ancient Mesopotamian, Chinese, Greek and Roman food storage and cooking techniques, through to the glories of eighteenth-century French Enlightenment cuisine, with its embrace of provincial cuisine, new plating on porcelain dinner services, and theories of the gastronomic arts.