The popularity of
white ceramic wares, plain and decorated, caught fire with Europe's
discovery of the white high-fired porcelain wares of China. The
thin-walled but strong white wares were translucent and resonated like
a bell when "pinged." The high-fired glass-like glaze
was hard and did not chip like earthenware glazes.
The Chinese discovered the art of porcelain making during the Tang
Dynasty (608 to 906). White ware or porcelain was comprised of
two ingredients: kaolin, a white-firing, relatively non-plastic clay
of which there are great deposits in China, and white China stone,
petuntse, a refined non-plastic felspathic material derived from
decayed granite.
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the 1300s, porcelains were decorated with bright colors
and intricate patterns, with the best of the famous blue
and white Ming wares made around 1425. Legend claims that
Venetian traveler Marco Polo (1254-1304) gave porcelain its name
when he first saw it in the court of Kublai Khan in the late
1200s. It reminded Polo of the pearly-white cowrie shell
called porcella. |
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Chinese porcelain found its way
to Holland via Portuguese traders in the 1500s. When the Dutch
began to trade directly with the Chinese in 1604, porcelain flowed
into Amsterdam. Throughout Europe, royals and merchant princes
passionately collected the true porcelain. At the same time,
entrepreneurial Dutch potters developed imitation China wares for the
less monied by adapting the old technique of tin-glazed
earthenware. Located on a waterway with fine shipping resources,
Delft became Holland's dominant center for its production and export.
Tin-glazed earthenware was not invented by the Dutch. Its
characteristic opaque white surface is due to the mixing of tin oxide
ashes into lead glaze, a method used before 800 in the Middle
East. The technique was carried to Italy and Spain through
expanding trade routes in the 1200s and 1300s, and the clean white
surface served as background for Italy's elaborate pictorial majolica
wares and Spain's colorful luster wares. Through the 1600s and
1700s, the use of opaque tin-glazes spread into Switzerland, France, Holland,
and into England.
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