PORCELAIN. - It is one of the great classes into which the products of ceramics (v.) are divided. It has an artificially composed paste at room temperature based on the ternary mixture: kaolin, feldspar, quartz; it consolidates at high temperature (from 1350° to 1420°) into a body with incipient vitrification (conchoidal fracture); white, translucent, not attackable by steel or by most chemical reagents. It requires, as a coating, a feldspathic glaze; without coating, "marble-grained," it is called in French biscuit, and is used for ornamental purposes. Typical porcelain (kaolinic), also called hard porcelain, is of Chinese origin, but imitations of it are known, such as soft porcelain based on glassy frits (Italian, 16th century, then especially French in the 18th century); phosphatic porcelain (or English, based on bone ash, produced in England around the mid-1700s); magnesian porcelain (or Italian, composed between the 18th and 19th centuries in Vinovo (Piedmont) by G. A. Gioanetti).
The word porcelain is thought by some to be of Portuguese origin, because in that language it means a shell from the seas of the Orient, shining and white, just like porcelain. However, it should be noted that Portuguese navigators only set course for the East Indies at the end of the 15th century, while Marco Polo, who lived from 1271 to 1295 at the court of Cambaluc (Peking), uses this term to designate that type of pottery produced by the ceramists of the Mongol Empire, adding that they are exported "per mi le monde." This is confirmed by historical accounts and by relics much earlier than the Venetian traveler, which suggest that porcelain was known at least from the 9th century in the Islamic world, from where it soon spread to the West via Cairo, Byzantium, and Venice.
Its rudiments can be found in a type of stoneware with a grayish body made in the Yüeh district (Chekiang) around the 1st century AD, but the first true translucent porcelain, still slightly ivory-colored, appears under the T'ang dynasty (618-906). The product is further perfected under the Sung dynasty (960-1280); well-known examples include rather heavy pieces, often called celadon, with lightly engraved or stamped decoration under a glaze of an indefinable sea-green color, otherwise known as kansai, and also ghuri and martabani; a production that continued to be imitated even under subsequent dynasties. With the Ming (1368-1634) and the Manchus (after 1644), alongside pieces with "egg-shell" walls, so called for their extreme thinness, there were very fine snowy pastes that were also used for delightful plastic works. French terminology (also applied to other varieties of Chinese porcelain) calls this type blanc de Chine. But color taste imposed superb monochrome tones (e.g., the famous blood-red and flambé reds, the glossy enamels of the famille verte and the mirror-like blacks, the very delicate clair de lune, the less common imperial yellow, and lavish polychromes, such as those of the so-called "five colors"). Special to the Ming is the blue-and-white class, widely diffused and continued over time, while a pale pink enamel, introduced into China from Europe just before the death of Emperor K'ang-hsi (1662-1722), gave rise to the famille rose. Once the Jesuits were admitted to the country, they stimulated the production of pieces with religious subjects (Jesuit porcelain), while those more widely destined for export to Europe, with Western heraldic motifs as well, departing from the port of Canton, took their name from that place. Japan itself had been invaded by Chinese porcelain. Local production, perhaps initiated in the 17th century, grew and developed over the next two centuries, so that the lavish porcelains known as
(from) the port of Imari, from which the products of the nearby Arita kilns departed, and those called Kakiemono, from the name of a family of artisans long active. It is worth recalling that around the year 1700, Augustus III the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, amassed such a large and notable collection of them as to form the famous Dresden collection.
But for a long time Europe had eagerly sought the ancient products of China, to which the Middle Ages attributed, one might say, miraculous virtues; they therefore became the object of precious gifts, highly coveted even by sovereigns. The formula for making porcelain was long sought by alchemists, and there are accounts (though no surviving relics) of special but futile attempts made in Venice, Urbino, Ferrara, and Milan. Lacking knowledge of kaolin, the essential element for making true porcelain, any products obtained could only be more or less successful decorative imitations. Indeed, the so-called "Medici porcelain," composed in the last quarter of the 16th century in Florence by Grand Duke Francesco I and the artisans and researchers under his patronage, while representing a triumph of the patron's genius and that of his collaborators, from the approximately 50 pieces that remain, is made from a mixture of clay and glassy frits, to which only the convenient name of "soft" porcelain can be given. Similarly, based on glassy frits was the product later found in France, in Paris and Rouen; it then took shape and achieved wonderful decorative charm at Sèvres with the creation of that famous manufactory. There, soft porcelain (or vitreous, or fritted) continued to be produced until the early years of the 19th century, when the new director of Sèvres, A. Brongniart, replaced it with true kaolinic porcelain. Holland, Germany, and England also attempted to obtain this product. In the latter country, around 1750, bone ash was introduced into the mixture, similar to what had been done for nearly a century in Germany to obtain milk glass; and this English product, based on phosphate, was called bone china. Several decades later, in Vinovo in Piedmont, magnesium silicates in the form of talc were used by Vittorio Amedeo Gioanetti; and this type of magnesian porcelain, despite the short duration of its production, can be considered the prototype of today's cordierite porcelain, which industry employs for specific needs (chemical and electrical engineering).
But the romantic quest for the method to produce true porcelain had reached a favorable conclusion around the year 1709, thanks to the German alchemist J. F. Böttger. Kept at work by Augustus III and having obtained kaolin, after exhausting research and trials, with the collaboration of the scientist Tschirnhaus, he was able to produce the first genuine European porcelain. Thus arose in Meissen the glorious Saxon manufactory, whose products were remarkable both technically and aesthetically, thanks to the work of distinguished chemists and artists, including Herold, J. J. Kändler, Marcolini, and others. The secret of the process, despite the most stringent precautions, could not be maintained. Vienna had its own manufactory in 1718, Venice in 1720, Doccia in Tuscany in 1735 through the Ginori firm, whose name remains linked to one of Italy’s finest productions; in 1740 a workshop was established at Capodimonte at the behest of Charles III of Bourbon, who in 1737 had married the daughter of the Elector of Saxony. Every state sought its own particular type of hard porcelain; patrons and industrialists engaged in the endeavor out of whim or profit, and porcelain production became a broadly European phenomenon, often taking on aspects of a veritable “tin plague.” “Arcanists,” refined artists, and modelers contributed to its composition and form. The wares were initially influenced by the so-called chinoiserie style, spread in Europe by Eastern embassies and further popularized by European travel accounts (a typical example is that of Johann Niehoff, sent by the Dutch East India Company to the Emperor of China, whose report appeared in Leiden in 1665 and in German translation four years later). The decorations and motifs then drew inspiration from Baroque and Rococo styles, which dominated Europe, drawing subjects especially from contemporary French prints. This influence extended not only to the forms of vases and richly painted table services in “third fire,” but also to fashion, costume, the commedia dell’arte, pastoral scenes, chinoiserie, Watteau-esque scenes, military episodes, portraits of figures in plaques and half-length, genre figurines, animals, flowers, dogs, architectural ornaments applied to entire “cabinets” in princely residences. Even Christian religious expressions (as well as Buddhist ones) found notable representation in this noble material. Besides a rare Chinese plate depicting the Crucifixion, now in the Bergen Museum (Norway), one can cite various sculptures illustrating key themes of the Catholic faith, produced in Italian, Spanish, German, and English workshops, such as the grand Deposition from Doccia or Capodimonte, c. 1775, in the National Museum of Stockholm, as well as scenes from the life of Jesus and the Passion, full-length figures of the Virgin and Child, the Immaculate Conception, the Mater Dolorosa, and saints (e.g., St. Charles Borromeo, modeled by Linck in the Frankenthal workshops, c. 1770, in the Munich Museum, and others). — See plates CXIX–CXX.