Searching for Beauty

In the summer of 2002 Dr Richard Jacobs, a Californian collector of ceramics, bought a piece from a young potter by the name of Christa Assad. For whatever reasons, this single act, just one among many by a distinguished professor, educationist and ceramics collector, kindled a desire to set down in print the innumerable thoughts and questions of a tirelessly inquisitive and often heretical spirit.

Taking his inspiration from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Richard Jacobs sets the tone of his letters to Christa Assad with his favourite quote from that classic work, Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language… At present you need to live the question.

Searching for Beauty is a book that will last, its readers returning again and again to their favourite passages.