Derby biscuit — unglazed porcelain figures produced at the Derby factory, prized for their soft, chalk-white surface — appears in poems about fragility and the exposure of the unfinished; The Derby biscuit figure's surface — porous, matte, taking the light differently from glazed work — suits poems about vulnerability: the self before the hardening gloss of experience; A poem about a child's bedroom in the eighteenth century might describe a Derby biscuit figure of a dancing girl: "pale as the thought of her, as easily broken"; In a verse about the collecting instinct, Derby biscuit figures attract those who prefer the intimate to the showy: "no glaze to catch the eye — only the white silence of the form itself"; The Derby factory's competition with Meissen and Sèvres extended to biscuit work, giving poems about English ambition and continental rivalry a ceramic dimension; A poet interested in the moment before completion might find Derby biscuit a perfect image: once-fired, formed, awaiting a second transformation that the collector will not permit.