| Almost every nation has different beginning of | | | | most beautiful of western pottery look shabby |
| ceramic as per their culture and tradition. It has | | | | by comparison. European ceramists regarded the |
| been given a new shapes and design base on | | | | Chinese and later, Japanese wares with awe and |
| their customs and culture. The following article will | | | | envy. Ambitious efforts were made to imitate the |
| make you know how ceramic got its new shape | | | | imported porcelain, which was in heavy demand |
| in the hand of Chinese. | | | | among wealthy collectors. When Italian potters |
| The history of Oriental pottery-making, for the | | | | took to coating their earthenware with white |
| most part, is much like that of the rest of the | | | | enamel, which gave a superficial porcelain look, it |
| world. Improvements were made gradually over | | | | was only the first of a long list of dismal failures. |
| thousands of years, although the Japanese and | | | | The problem soon attracted the attention of |
| Chinese apparently got a head-start in the field. | | | | Italian majolists and alchemists. The first |
| As early as 3000 B.C., Chinese ceramists were | | | | reasonable imitation of porcelain was made at |
| shaping some of the most artistic pottery in the | | | | Florence in 1585 by a team of alchemists and |
| annals of man, Europe at this date was still the | | | | potters working under the patronage of |
| home of roving bands of barbarians, who knew | | | | Francesco de Medici. |
| little more about making pottery than their earliest | | | | This Florentine "porcelain" was the forerunner of |
| forebears. | | | | many European wares made in avowed imitation |
| Probably the most august age of Chinese | | | | of true Oriental porcelain. They form a link |
| ceramics was during the Sung Dynasty, which | | | | between pottery and glass, for they may be |
| lasted from 960-1279 A.D. It was in this period | | | | considered either as pottery rendered translucent |
| that porcelain was first developed. The earliest | | | | or as glass rendered opaque by shaping and firing |
| known examples of porcelain are of the ying | | | | a mixture containing a large percentage of glass |
| Ch'ing type a soft-looking, bubbly glaze, white in | | | | with small amounts of clay. |
| color but with a faint tinge of iridescent green or | | | | But the search for the secret of true porcelain |
| blue. | | | | manufacture was excitedly continued by European |
| Chinese artisans jealously guarded their individual | | | | ceramists for generations. The imitations ran the |
| techniques for producing porcelain. The clay had to | | | | gamut of invention and ingenuity. By the mid-17th |
| be properly aged, in many cases for centuries. | | | | century, the research was considered so |
| Succeeding generations of potters inherited the | | | | important that the experimenters, backed by |
| family's supply of clay, which was buried in the | | | | such patrons as the Elector of Saxony and |
| ground to be dug up more than 100 years later | | | | Madame de Pompadour, were more interested in |
| by a potter's son or grandson. | | | | solving the riddle of porcelain than they were in |
| When Oriental porcelain was introduced into | | | | the transmutation of base metals into gold. |
| Europe in the 15th century, it made even the | | | | |