One year—I believe it was 1963—the New York dealer, Dr Marius Frankfurter, made a special trip to Vichy to offer Utz a piece of porcelain that was quite outside his usual range: a model known as ‘The Spaghetti Eater’, made not in Meissen, but at the CapodiMonte factory in Naples.

In the same baby blue bedroom, Dr Frankfurter unwrapped the object from its multiple layers of tissue paper and set it on the commode, with the reverence of a priest exhibiting the Host. Utz could hardly help comparing its pearly gaze with the warted epidermis of the dealer. But that was life! The ugliest men loved the most beautiful things.

—Bruce Chatwin, Utz