Porcelain

Porcelain was first made in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce). The kind most familiar in the West was not manufactured until the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368 ce). It was made from kaolin (white china clay) and petuntse (a feldspathic rock also called china stone), the latter being ground to powder and mixed with the clay. During the firing, which took place at a temperature of about 2,650 °F (1,450 °C), the petuntse vitrified, while the refractory clay ensured that the vessel retained its shape.

In medieval times isolated specimens of Chinese porcelain found their way to Europe, where they were much prized, principally because of their translucency. European potters made numerous attempts to imitate them, and, since at that time there was no exact body of chemical and physical knowledge whereby the porcelain could be analyzed and then synthesized, experiments proceeded strictly by analogy. The only manufactured translucent substance then known was glass, and it was perhaps inevitable that glass made opaque with tin oxide (the German Milchglas, or milk glass, for example) should have been used as a substitute for porcelain. The nature of glass, however, made it impossible to shape it by any of the means used by the potter, and a mixture of clay and ground glass was eventually tried. Porcelain made in this way resembles that of the Chinese only superficially and is always termed soft, or artificial, porcelain. The date and place of the first attempt to make soft porcelain are debatable, but some Middle Eastern pottery of the 12th century was made from glaze material mixed with clay and is occasionally translucent (see below Islamic: Egyptian). Much the same formula was employed with a measure of success in Florence about 1575 at workshops under the patronage of Duke Francesco de’Medici. No further attempts of any kind appear to have been made until the mid-17th century, when Claude and François Révérend, Paris importers of Dutch pottery, were granted a monopoly of porcelain manufacture in France. It is not known whether they succeeded in making it or not, but, certainly by the end of the 17th century, porcelain was being made in quantity, this time by a factory at Saint-Cloud, near Paris.

The secret of true, or hard, porcelain similar to that of China was not discovered until about 1707 in Saxony, when Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, assisted by an alchemist called Johann Friedrich Böttger, substituted ground feldspathic rock for the ground glass in the soft porcelain formula. Soft porcelain, always regarded as a substitute for hard porcelain, was progressively discontinued because it was uneconomic; kiln wastage was excessive, occasionally rising to nine-tenths of the total.

The terms soft and hard porcelain refer to the soft firing (about 2,200 °F, or 1,200 °C) necessary for the first, and the hard firing (about 2,650 °F, or 1,450 °C) necessary for the second. By coincidence they apply also to the physical properties of the two substances: for example, soft porcelain can be cut with a file, whereas hard porcelain cannot. This is sometimes used as a test for the nature of the body.

In the course of experiments in England during the 18th century, a type of soft porcelain was made in which bone ash (a calcium phosphate made by roasting the bones of cattle and grinding them to a fine powder) was added to the ground glass. Josiah Spode the Second later added this bone ash to the true, hard porcelain formula, and the resulting body, known as bone china, has since become the standard English porcelain. Hard porcelain is strong, but its vitreous nature causes it to chip fairly easily and, unless especially treated, it is usually tinged slightly with blue or gray. Bone china is slightly easier to manufacture. It is strong, does not chip easily, and the bone ash confers an ivory-white appearance widely regarded as desirable. Generally, bone china is most popular for table services in England and the United States, while hard porcelain is preferred on the European continent.

Shaping the clay

The earliest vessels were modeled by hand, using the finger and thumb, a method employed still by the Japanese to make raku teabowls. Flat slabs of clay luted together (using clay slip as an adhesive) were employed to make square or oblong vessels, and the slabs could be formed into a cylinder and provided with a flat base by the same means. Coiled pottery was an early development. Long rolls of clay were coiled in a circle, layer upon layer, until the approximate shape had been attained; the walls of the vessel were then finished by scraping and smoothing. Some remarkably fine early pots were made in this way.

It is impossible to say when the potter’s wheel, which is a difficult tool and needs long apprenticeship, was introduced. A pot cannot be made by hand modeling or coiling without the potter’s either turning it or moving around it, and, as turning involves the least expenditure of human effort, it would obviously be preferred. The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery manufacture led eventually to the introduction of the kick wheel, rotated by foot, which became the potter’s principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly rotating disc and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. This is a considerable feat of manual dexterity that leads to much greater exactness and symmetry of form. Perhaps the most skillful of all potters have been the Chinese. Excellent examples of their virtuosity are the double-gourd vases, made from the 16th century onward, which were turned in separate sections and afterward joined together. By the 18th century the wheel was no longer necessarily turned by the potter’s foot but by small boys, and since the 19th century the motive power has been mechanical. Electrical power was common in the 20th century, but many artisans continued to prefer foot power.

Jollying, or jiggering, is the mechanical adaptation of wheel throwing and is used where mass production or duplication of the same shape—particularly cups and plates—is required. The jolly, or jigger, was introduced during the 18th century. It is similar to the wheel in appearance except that the head consists of a plaster mold shaped like the inside of an object, such as a plate. As it revolves, the interior of the plate is shaped by pressing the clay against the head, while the exterior, including the footring, is shaped by a profile (a flat piece of metal cut to the contour of the underside of the plate) brought into contact with the clay. Machines that make both cups and plates automatically on this principle were introduced in the 20th century. Small parts, such as cup handles, are made separately by pressing clay into molds and are subsequently attached to the vessel by luting.

One of the earliest methods of shaping clay was molding. Pots were made by smearing clay around the inside of a basket or coarsely woven sack. The matrix was consumed during firing, leaving the finished pot with the impression of the weave on the exterior. A more advanced method, used by the Greeks and others, is to press the pottery body into molds of fired clay. Though the early molds were comparatively simple, they later became more complex, a tendency best seen in those molds used for the manufacture of pottery figures. The unglazed earthenware figures of Tanagra (Boeotia, central Greece) were first modeled by hand, then molds of whole figures were used, and finally the components—arms, legs, heads, and torsos—were all molded separately. The parts were often regarded as interchangeable, so that a variety of models could be constructed from a limited number of components. No improvement on this method of manufacture had been devised by the 20th century: the European porcelain factories make their figures in precisely the same way.

Plaster of paris molds were introduced into Staffordshire about 1745. They enabled vessels to be cast in slip, for when the slip was poured into the mold the plaster absorbed the water from it, thus leaving a layer of clay on the surface of the mold. When this layer had reached a sufficient strength and thickness, the surplus slip was poured off, the cast removed and fired, and the mold used again. This method is still in common use.