Antique Ostindia porcelain, voted Sweden’s “Service of the Century”, owes its existence to a hidden treasure. After a ship returning from China sank off Gothenburg in 1745, a fragment of porcelain from the cargo somehow found its way into a cupboard at the Rörstrand factory. Many years later, in 1932, the wife of factory manager Knut Almström spotted it and famously said: “Knut, I think this might be worth doing something with…” And so a shard of Chinese porcelain became the model for an iconic Rörstrand design.35cl