Before arriving for the first time at Spode, I brought a copy of Cipriano Piccolpasso’s The Three Books of the Potter’s Art with me. This is an unique technical manual of ceramics written in 1548, to which art history has never referred. Having no knowledge of, nor any special interest in majolica or the art of the potter, I had nevertheless stumbled across a couple of references to Piccolpasso’s work from an unexpected source, namely the pseudonymous French alchemist Fulcanelli, writing in the early Twentieth Century.