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 0. Top of Tutorial Page(right-side)
 1. Prologue.
 2. A Reunited China
 3. Tang Lead Glazed Earthenware
 4. Potter's Notes(1) Firing Lead Glazes
 5. Sancai (three colour)lead glazed ware
 6. The Challenge: Decorated Silver Ware
 7. Potter's Notes(2) Imitating background texture.
 8. The Influence of the 'Silk Routes'
 9. Over firing Sancai Glazes
    Over-decorated and Over-fired
           Background Texture Only
10. A New Painterly Style?
11. Tang Marbled Earthenware

12. Potter's Notes(3) on Marbled Clay Bodies
13. The Rise and Fall of Sancai
14. Northern Stonewares
15. Tang High Fire Ware
16. Notes on Chinese Porcelain
17. White ware of the North
18. Celadon ware of the South
19. Pressmoulded and Sprig Decorated Ware
20. Ochrous, Brown and Black Glazed Ware
21. Suffused Glazes on Stoneware/Porcelanous Ware
22. Books of Interest
23. Back to Tutorial Index Page

Chinese Porcelain

Porcelain has been classified in so many different ways by so many writers and scholars that the study can be quite confusing. Porcelain was first made in China. We have only a fragmentory tale of the invention/discovery of porcelain, its nature and manufacture. Its beginnings are probably in Shang times. After many accidental discoveries, isolated experiments and evolving various recipes over centuries porcelain appears as a more refined whiter, tougher but thinner than other high fire ware - stoneware, we would say. This ceramic material porcelain soon became a luxury product to be reckoned with, as we reach the Tang era, particularly as little was known about the material recipes, manufacture or firing apart from the Chinese pottery fraternity. Many experts now believe the first true porcelain was made in the province of Zhejiang during the Eastern Han period because there were significant amounts of porcelain-building minerals (china clay, porcelain stone or a combination of the both) found at kiln sites from this time, which are estimated to have been fired at between 1260 and 1300 degrees Celsius.

Porcelain A mature fired hard paste porcelain body is very hard, impermeable, completely vitreous, white and, if thin, translucent. The stiffening effect of the high alumina content explains why, though vitreous, porcelain does not distort and collapse at its maturing point. which can range from about 1250 to 1400°C depending on the composition. Of course, if fired to higher temperatures it would eventually distort and collapse.

Kaolin and Petunse and Porcelain
Kaolin, pure china clay, mixed with petunse(porcelain stone) and possibly limestone or dolomite, appears to be the first recipes for making porcelain - in China. However there is still no real certainty of how and when this started. Petunse is found in China; it is a refined non-plastic felspathic mineral derived from decayed granite, which when washed and prepared for use was dried in small white blocks (pai-tun-tzü)

Northern and Southern Clay Bodies Geological ages ago China was formed when two separate land masses came together. These separate masses joined between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. In the north, ceramics were made mostly from a fine white refractory kaolin clay whereas in the south, they were made mostly of crushed porcelain stone, (which is the refined remains of decayed granite) and a smaller amount of other clays. Chinese high fire ceramic wares are often classified as being northern or southern, because the materials used to make the ware greatly differed.

In the North coal-fuelled kilns were used to produce the slow, high-temperature firing needed to soften and mature refractory china clay rich bodies. In the south, potters used wood-fuelled cross-draft kilns and developed a faster, lower-temperature firing better suited to porcelain stone(Petunse)-rich bodies they were using. Although like many Kilns throughout China Tang potters did produce white wares, their most popular production was of green or celadon ware.