Porcelain is a hard, translucent white ceramic that originated in China in the 600s and Europe in the 1700s. It is often associated with delicate plates, cups, and vases. The technique of making porcelain involves combining white kaolin clay with ground granite and cooking it at high temperatures. European attempts to replicate it led to the creation of soft-paste porcelain and bone china. Porcelain is made by molding light clay with materials like glass, feldspar, and granite, firing it in a bisque kiln, applying glazes, and firing it again at high temperatures. It is used for tableware, electrical insulators, tiles, bathroom fixtures, and dentures.
Porcelain is a very hard, translucent white ceramic produced in China since the 600s and in Europe since the 1700s. Because it was associated with China and often used to make delicate plates, cups, vases, and other works of art, it is sometimes known as “ fine china”. Some craftsmen make the distinction between hard-paste porcelain, made in the traditional Chinese style, and soft-paste porcelain, claiming that only soft-paste is true porcelain, but the terms are used interchangeably by most of the rest of the world.
Clays have been used for centuries to form tableware and objets d’art, and porcelain’s roots began in the Han Dynasty, when Chinese craftsmen first combined white kaolin clay with a type of ground granite and they cooked it at extremely high temperatures. The result was a strong, translucent, resonant, and beautiful piece of ceramic. The technique was further refined during the Tang dynasty, around 6oo AD, to create strong, thin walls that were truly translucent. European adventurers were fascinated by the unique and beautiful material, which looked drastically different from the stoneware then in production, and attempted to replicate it.
Early European achievements in duplicating pottery led to porcelain, soft-paste porcelain made from clays and silicates. In the 1700s, a German pottery company successfully made bone china, which closely resembles real porcelain, by mixing calcified bone, clay, and feldspar. Bone china is extremely durable and relatively easy to make and has become a popular choice in many English-speaking nations, although real porcelain is preferred in much of Europe and Asia. Both Britain and Germany produce large quantities of it both for use in Europe and for export to other nations.
Porcelain starts with a light clay, such as china white, which has small, tight grains that are further ground so they are uniform. Materials such as glass, feldspar, and granite are ground with the clay before adding water to the slurry so it can be worked. The clay is molded into the desired shape before being fired in a bisque kiln at moderate temperatures. After being biscuitd, the glazes are applied and the object is fired at a high temperature, obtaining a molten and resistant piece of ceramic, delicate, translucent and very useful. In addition to being used for tableware, porcelain is also used to make electrical insulators, tiles, bathroom fixtures, and dentures.
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