Porcelain
Fine, white, often translucent ceramic fired at high temperature, first developed in China and later made across Asia and Europe.
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About
Porcelain is made from kaolin, a pure white clay, combined with feldspathic stone and fired at around 1,300°C, which makes it dense, hard, white and, when thin, translucent. It developed gradually in China, where potters were producing fine white wares by the Tang dynasty; Jingdezhen became the great centre, famous from the 14th century for blue-and-white porcelain painted in cobalt.
Chinese exports, and later Japanese porcelain from Arita, spurred European attempts to discover the secret. At Meissen in Saxony, Johann Friedrich Böttger and his colleagues produced the first European hard-paste porcelain around 1709–10, and factories at Vincennes, later moved to Sèvres, and at Copenhagen followed with their own bodies and styles. Modern makers value porcelain for precision and light: Sueharu Fukami casts sharp, blade-like forms in pale celadon. Look for whiteness at an unglazed foot, a clear ring when tapped and light passing through thin walls.
