Joanna here, talking about porcelain,
as in what you make dishes of,
(also electrical insulators, scientific crucibles, and toilets, though these predate our historical characters by a good bit and are thus of less immediate interest than they might otherwise be.)
Porcelain is arguably the luxury product of the Georgian and Regency eras. All those fancy dinner parties ...? Porcelain is what they were eating off of.
Now, pottery has been with us since the first cavewoman patted out a crude bowl from river clay and set it to dry in the sun, or buried that bowl in a pit and built a fire on top of it.
As one does.
These pit-fired ceramics are not mere stepping stones in the history of pottery. People all over the world still make and use exactly this technique.
Kiln-fired ceramics (We will get to porcelain. Be patient. I want to talk about beer first.) have been around for 8000 years. That earliest-so-far kiln was found at Yarim Tepe in Iraq.
The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer dates to between 5400 and 5000 years ago. Fragments of a jug containing a by-product of the brewing process were discovered at Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of Iran.
So high quality pots to drink beer out of are considerably older than beer. This tells us much about the human condition.
So. What exactly is porcelain?
Porcelain is made from kaolin clay, which is not found just everywhere, and a varying bunch of add-ins. It's fired at very high temperatures -- 1200° to 1400°C (2200° to 2600°F.)
This sort of clay is capable of detailed modeling and thin form. It becomes a hard, white, glossy and uniquely translucent pottery. See that picture way up top with the sun shining through a plate? That's porcelain doing its thing.
It's surprisingly durable. It takes color well.
It's really lovely.
The word "kaolin" derives from "Gaoling", literally "High Ridge", a village in Jiangxi Province in China.
(Do you need to know kaolin clay is the main ingredient of kaopectate? No? I didn't think so.)
The European word "porcelain" is even more fun. It comes from the Italian word "porcella," the name of a sort of smooth white cowrie shell. Porcella-the-shell, in turn, means "little pig" or "female pig genitalia," the Italians having a robust, earthy turn of humor when it comes to naming their cowrie shells.
The first mention of the word porcelain is in Marco Polo.
Etymologists have all the fun.
The Chinese made splendid ceramics all along. See that pot above and to the left. That's old, old earthenware, influenced by contemporary cast bronze forms. It has quite a presence. Just wonderful, isn't it?
The Chinese invented porcelain (and spaghetti and many other wonderful things including fireworks.) They kinda revolutionized the whole pottery business.
True, they putzed about for centuries, making close-to-porcelain and this-is-almost-as-good-as-porcelain products which had their own charm.
Then in the ninth century CE, they broke the code on true porcelain and nothing would ever be the same.
The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) controlled a wide-flung porcelain trade that expanded across the Islamic kingdoms to Africa via the Silk Road. Finished pieces, (but not the secret of how to make them,) traveled great distances. And both the art work and the technology of making porcelain spread to Korea and, in 1600, to Japan.
In the fullness of time, by which I mean late Fourteenth Century, Europe saw and Europe wanted. They were late getting into the export-porcelain-from-the-Far-East game, but enthusiastic.
Portuguese merchants began direct trade by sea In 1517, followed by the Dutch in 1598.
Japan became an exporter to the West after 1600.
Porcelain became one of the great luxuries of the European rich.
I look at the best of what might have been acquired by traders and brought to Georgian or Regency England for rich patrons. The balanced, sophisticated beauty of these pieces must have had a stunning impact.
Before 1700, the Chinese porcelain sent to Europe was mostly white or blue-and-white ware like this.
That early blue-and-white export ware was the inspiration for Delft Ware. The popular modern blue onion pattern from Meissen derives from this too.
Then, after about 1700, color arrived.
Bang.
And what color! The clear white gloss of porcelain takes to overglaze enamel like cake to icing.
These below are Japanese examples because pretty.
A writer of Georgian and Regency works can use this. The rich male protagonist, (perhaps a Duke,) can very reasonably own or trade in or steal and hold for ransom these beautiful objects and wouldn't they be lovely to describe?
Okay. Europe, having been teased with these exquisite objects, longed to make their own. Cheaper.
The merchants of the Far East sold plates and flagons and vases but not the secrets of how they were made.
Europeans gamely experimented, with limited success.
Then, in 1712, a French Jesuit in China blew the gaff. He witnessed the technical secrets of porcelain making and published to the world. Doubtless an early exponent of the "Information Wants to be Free" philosophy.
Europe embarked upon porcelain.
And below ... I've seen examples of these fruits and vegetables in museums. Some are true trompe l'oeil. Some are just for fun. (I mention these in one of my books.)
I make pottery ... somewhat badly. (She says, defiant.)
Never tried porcelain. It's an exacting technique.
I'm very fond of what I make, even though I see all the defects.
That's my own pottery story.
What about you ... do you have a piece of pottery or porcelain that means something to you? A box you keep on your dresser to hold rings? A vase where the fish swallows the flowers and it is so hokey and it belonged to your grandmother?