Show art of malting making porcelain credited to the chinese porcelain has an interesting history many centuries old when we take a cup of coffee from a porcelain cup we are lifting an object that took hundreds of years to create for unlike topsy it just grow writes clai claire re winslow in the chicago tribune most of us hadean have an indiscriminate name for porcelain fa faience lence and stoneware we call them china but this is a misnomer faience is an earthenware or pottery much more porous and less durable than porcelain and stoneware while stu sturdy ady has none of the pure white color or the plastic quality of porcelain porcelain must always have one ingredient in its composition kaolin the chinese had passed through the various evolutionary stages of the art of making porcelain and w were ere producing it as long ago as the yuan dynasty 1279 1368 abundant supplies of kaolin or white clay existed in their land although a few pieces of porcelain reached europe europ by devious routes in the early sixteenth sixteenth century most europeans had not heard of it before the days of the trading ships in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries then it was brought in large quantities and was considered a luxury along with the introduction of coffee chocolate and tea |