Porcelain is named after a seashell, and Europe spent centuries chasing its secret
The word porcelain comes from an old Italian name for the cowrie shell, whose glossy surface the ware resembled. Chinese potters took centuries to perfect it. European makers needed until the early 1700s to match it, and their failed imitations gave the world soft-paste porcelain and, eventually, English bone china.
What makes porcelain special is heat. Clay rich in kaolin is fired at 1,200 to 1,400 degrees Celsius, hot enough for the body to turn partly glassy and grow a mineral called mullite inside. The result is hard, white, often translucent and watertight even before glazing; glaze is added mainly for decoration and to resist stains. The clays are tricky to shape, because a tiny change in water content swings them from stiff to unworkable.
China's path was long. Early glazed proto-porcelain dates from the Shang dynasty, and by the Eastern Han high-fired porcelain had arrived; whiteness and translucency were standard by the Sui and Tang periods. Under the Song, production became industrial, with long dragon kilns could bake up to 25,000 items in one firing, later topping 100,000. From the Yuan dynasty onward Jingdezhen was the leading centre, and the Yongle emperor faced an entire pagoda at Nanjing in white porcelain bricks. Ming blue-and-white became a coveted export, reaching Europe via the Silk Road and, from 1517, Portuguese ships.
Japan's industry began through war. During the invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598, Korean potters were taken captive; one found porcelain clay near Arita, and kilns soon multiplied. When the Ming collapse disrupted Chinese supply, Japanese exports through the Dutch East India Company, from about 1660, rushed to fill the gap.
Europe experimented with clay mixed with ground glass, soapstone and lime, making soft-paste wares that slumped in the kiln and were never truly porcelain. True hard-paste arrived at Meissen in the early 18th century. In England, potters who had read a Jesuit missionary's detailed letters on Chinese methods developed bone china in 1748, traditionally two parts bone ash to one each of kaolin and china stone. In 2021 porcelain tableware was a market worth an estimated 22.1 billion dollars.
Source: Porcelain
