History of porcelain – China’s white gold

If someone thinks that history of porcelain Is boring, it is a profound mistake! Suffice it to say that Europeans spent hundreds of years wondering how the material that was called “white gold” was made. The delicate, ceramic material even caused sleepless nights for alchemists, who told everyone that they knew how to convert base metals into gold. One of them succeeded, but by then generations had passed since the first porcelain appeared in Europe, brought from China. It is this country that is considered the cradle of porcelain.

If we have porcelain dishes or ornaments in our possession, we can see for ourselves – and touch will only confirm it – that Chinese ceramics, compared to indigenous European ones, are “heaven and earth.” For porcelain is nothing more than ceramics, which we associate with rough, hard and heavy vessels of orange clay. But porcelain is neither heavy nor rough. Rather, it is light, delicate and smooth. One might add that in some variants it is even translucent when looked at against the light!

Thousands of years of striving for perfection. The origins of porcelain history

It is not known when exactly the Chinese began producing porcelain, using the material not only in dishes but also in numerous works of art. It has been approximated that the first smooth ceramics – called “primitive porcelain” – were found. Was established between 1600 and 1046 BC, during the Shang dynasty. However, it had little in common with the porcelain that became widespread later. Rather, it was akin to a basic material suitable for building waterproof vessels. The real porcelain boom began during the Han Dynasty, when the first smelting furnaces were built – between 25 and 220 AD.

The first such products, were known as celadon. Today, porcelain and celadon are already distinguished as separate types of ceramics. However, it is worth noting that in Chinese there is only one word to describe both variants of Chinese ceramics (ci 瓷). Celadon is a type of early porcelain with a characteristic greenish color. The next hundreds of years of evolution of the Chinese state and subsequent dynasties branched out the porcelain and celadon industry. Later, more variations of Chinese ceramics were created.

History of porcelain – the first treatments

The most famous and common type of porcelain to this day was created during the Yuan Dynasty, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.This true hard porcelain was made from petuntse, or porcelain stone (feldspar rock) ground into powder and mixed with kaolin (white porcelain clay). Each ingredient had a function.

During processing at 1450 degrees Celsius, pentuse glazed, providing the porcelain’s distinctive visual appeal, while kaolin ensured that the product retained its shape. Europeans – in an attempt to find a “patent” for producing this type of porcelain – invented a different kind. It was a soft porcelain, made from a mixture of clay and crushed glass. It is also called artificial porcelain.

Marco Polo’s Travels and Alchemy. How Europeans tried to counterfeit Chinese porcelain

Some say that he was the first to bring porcelain to Europe by the famous Venetian merchant and traveler Marco Polo. This is, of course, half-true – he did indeed bring, but certainly not the first. It is not known exactly when Chinese ceramics reached Europe. First, it must have become widespread in the countries of Central Asia, so that Arab merchants could sell it to Europeans. It was probably they who were the first to bring objects to Europe, made of this valuable material. It is worth interjecting a small digression here.

The name celadon probably comes from from the name Saladin – or rather Salah ad-Dina, the first sultan of Egypt, who lived in the 11th century. He was famous for his great love of Chinese ceramics – later called celadon – with a greenish color… Such a celadon color. And the name of this color also suggests something. Traces of celadon have also been discovered in Spain, which was still ruled partly by Muslims under Saladin. A fragment of an 11th century ceramic bowl made of celadon was found in the fortress of Aljaferia (Zaragoza, Spain).

In that case, Marco Polo could not have been the first. But the fact is that he returned from China in the 14th century, bringing back various goods from there. Including various vials and containers of Chinese spices and herbs, Among them was a beautiful little gray-green jar. This is when the term porcelain was coined. Marco Polo called this unique, small vessel porcellana. It’s a word from Old Italian, related to the word porcellini, which is in turn the name of sea snails whose shell resembled Polo the color of his jar. Other names for this mollusk are kauri or in Polish… porcelains.

The elephant (in the porcelain warehouse?) and the Polish case. August II the Strong owned the first porcelain factory in Europe

After that, it was downhill from there. Porcelain and celadon flowed into Europe via the Silk Road and then the Dutch sea routes. By this time, Europeans had become very familiar with this Chinese fine pottery and were figuring out how to produce dishes of the same material in Europe. Unlike today, it would have been much cheaper to produce in Europe back then than to import from China. It took HUNDREDS of years before Europeans figured out how to counterfeit Chinese ceramics. No wonder, since even Marco Polo wrote total nonsense about its manufacture!

“The vessels are made of crumbly earth or clay, which is dug as if from a mine and laid out in huge mounds, and then left for thirty or forty years exposed to wind, rain and sun. During this time the earth is so refined that the vessels made from it have an azure hue and a very brilliant luster,” Polo wrote in his diary.

And what is the history of porcelain in Europe?

The creator of European porcelain is considered to be Johann Friedrich Böttger – A German from Saxony. Böttger was an alchemist – yes, he too believed he could turn lead into gold. With porcelain, it wasn’t so simple. Eventually, however, he succeeded. On January 15, 1708, the first European porcelain recipe was created. It was a great event, even worth notifying the king himself! Interestingly… the Polish king – August II the Strong.

A year later, the first porcelain manufactory in Europe was established, precisely at Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen (Saxony), which he founded Augustus II the Strong! As the king of Poland came from the Saxon dynasty, Saxony was also under his rule. So it happened that the ruler of the Republic owned the first and only porcelain factory in Europe at that time! In subsequent years, manufactories were established in Austria and England, among others.

Interestingly, some sources say that August II the Strong imprisoned Böttger, who, as an alchemist, was supposed to “break the code of porcelain” for him, so that the ruler could satisfy his porcelain obsession.

“Don’t you know that it is the same with oranges as it is with china, that once a person gets sick of one thing or the other, he can never have enough of them and wants to have more and more of them?” – was to write the King of Poland in one of his letters.

Porcelain worth more than gold? The most famous porcelain ornaments and dishes

Porcelain has always been and continues to be a valuable, desirable material. And so, small items – such as figurines, vase plates and other ornaments – can cost up to tens of millions of dollars. And while they are certainly not “in the weight of gold”, because the weight of gold does not match, certainly some objects, made of porcelain can dethrone the natural, beautiful luster of the precious metal.

One such porcelain gem – an 18th-century one, Chinese vase from the Ming Dynasty era – was found in a house near London. It had stood there unnoticed for a long time, as an ordinary vase. In fact, it may have been looted by the British from the Summer Palace in Beijing during the Opium Wars in 1860. The beautifully painted vase was auctioned off and returned to China. It was bought in 2010 by a Chinese man for $83 million – beating the asking price by 50 times!

Different continents – different history of porcelain

Chinese porcelain ornaments have been and will remain the most valuable, but European porcelain, which is, after all, a “fake” of the Chinese one, also stands out in this regard. As it turns out – Johann Friedrich Böttger developed such a good recipe that Meissen (or Dresden) porcelain became one of the most desirable next to the original one – Chinese porcelain. It is Meissen porcelain that should immediately come to mind when we see porcelain figurines.

Early works of the Meissen manufactory were able to sell for fat thousands of dollars. Some figurines have been auctioned for as much as $200,000. Most famous, however, are works by Johann Jakob Kirchner and Johann Joachim Kändler. Kirchner’s 1732 work, depicting a bird – a “Great Bustard” – was sold at auction in 2015 for $1,071,209, despite signs of restoration and repair.

Other famous porcelains include the Sevres Figurines and porcelain from Capodimonte, a manufactory founded in Italy by Maria Amalia of Saxony, granddaughter of Augustus the Strong and Queen of Spain.