Porcelain

Chinese porcelain is a durable, beautiful, and historically significant example of ceramicpots and other articles made from clay hardened by heat. art. It serves as an important industry in China and is greatly admired around the world. The basic recipe for producing porcelaina hard, fine-grained, nonporous ceramic ware that is usually translucent and white. consists of four steps: forming a piece, glazing, decorating, and firing. The firing takes place in a kilna type of oven for firing clay or porcelain to make ceramic ware. at extremely high temperatures above 1260 degrees Celsius (or 2300 degrees Fahrenheit). The finest porcelains are white and translucent thanks to the presence of kaolin—a soft, white clay that is bountiful around certain Chinese rivers. Artisans have mastered the right proportions of kaolin with other materials such as feldspar, ball clay, glass, or bone ash to achieve the effects of color and translucence. Artisans during the Shang dynastythe earliest Chinese dynasty verified by scholars, ruling from ca. 1600 to 1050 BCE. (ca. 1600–1050 BCE) made the first proto-porcelains. Improved techniques came during the Eastern Han dynastya series of rulers from a single family. (25–220 CE), and the white, translucent porcelain we know today came during the Tang(tahng) dynasty (618–907). By the time of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), porcelain was being exported to Europe.