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Home Page This page is created for collectors of Fine China and porcelain ware.
It contains educational, historical information, and
tracking information of selected colletable items.
Tracking information of selected collectable items
"Grapes"
Fine China flatware made in Czech Republic
Bright gold & Platinum rim. Size: 10.5in.
Hand painted by Marina Klement
Estimated value: $189.00
Collector: Belinda Hayes, USA
"Snowman"
Porcelain flatware made in China
Gold rim. 3D enamel details. Size: 8 in.
Hand painted by Marina Klement
Estimated value: $79.00
Collector: Angie Ernstes, USA"Pagoda Temple"
White porcelain teapot made in China
Hand painted by Marina Klement
Estimated value: $75.00
Collector: Teresa Cheung, USA
"X-mas tea"
White porcelain teapot made in China
Hand painted by Marina Klement
Estimated value: $75.00
Collector: Jan Weiss, USA
Fine China--high-quality
porcelain or ceramic ware.
Porcelain --(Portuguese porcellana, "little pig"), "Aristocrat of Ceramics" is hard white translucent ceramic.
Ceramics--(Greek keramos, "potter's clay"), originally the art of making pottery. Now science of manufacturing articles prepared from pliable, hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion resistant materials made by firing clay or other nonmetallic minerals. Ceramic materials are nonmetallic, inorganic compounds, primarily oxides, but also carbides, nitrides, borides, and silicates. Ceramic products are used not only for artistic objects and tableware, but also in many industries, such as dentistry, construction, electrical, space technology and other industries. Iron oxide particles are the active component in a variety of magnetic recording media, such as recording tape and the computer diskette.
History
The secret of Porcelain
It was those masters potters of all time, the Chinese, who first discovered the secret of porcelain making--a secret so skillfully guarded that the history of ceramics in Europe thereafter is largely concerned with manifold efforts to emulate this great achievement.
The exact date of the invention of porcelain in China is unknown; but ancient records have been found stating that the secret was discovered in Siu-Ping at about 185 B.C.
It is known that the first porcelain wares, produced under royal patronage, were wrought exclusively for the imperial household, with certain pieces named after the emperor.
Chinese porcelain
According to Chinese historians, art of making pottery was developed there about 2700 B.C., but the first real evidence of the making of porcelain dates from the period of Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-617).
The rare porcelains of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1279) often called China's Augustan Age of Art. The development of technology in China had peaked during the Sung Dynasty. The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) added little to their earlier accomplishments. However, during the Ming period porcelain manufacture at Jingdezhen (Ching-te-chen) gained wide recognition. The kilns there were able to turn out enough high-quality pieces to supply all of China. Famous styles include yellow imperial bowls, red monochrome vases, and highly decorated enameled ceramics painted in traditional patterns. In addition, the traditional blue-and-white pieces that inspired Dutch delftware had their origins in the Ming period. To this day connoisseurs value certain marks on Ming porcelain that indicate the patronage of a particular emperor.
The full impact of Ming porcelain was felt throughout Europe in the first half of the 17th century, particularly in the golden age of delftware (1630-1700). The porcelain became thinner, its decoration more delicate. Tiles, plates, jugs, and vases were made, and the different Delft factory marks were imitated, even by the Chinese. Under the conditions of peace and prosperity, many art forms grew more elaborate and luxurious. Porcelains lost the stately elegance of their Ming predecessors and became ornate and colorful, even gaudy. Western art and designs began to influence Chinese artists and artisans. Manufacturers of Chinese export porcelains satisfied foreign tastes by copying designs from European paintings. These designs in turn influenced domestic porcelains as well. Qing painters who saw European art experimented with such Western techniques of representation as perspective, shading, and aerial views.
A vast number of fine porcelain vessels were produced in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), for both domestic and foreign markets, with potters concentrating on the refinement of glazes. Popular polychrome enamel styles were famille verte (green, yellow, and aubergine purple) and its derivatives, famille noir (black ground) and famille jaune (yellow ground). Monochromatic copper red glazes popular in Ming--both oxblood (sang de boeuf ) and the paler peach bloom--were revived, as were Song celadons. In the 18th century, European collecting of Chinese porcelain was at its peak. By the end of the century, however, the endless repetitions of old motifs and forms led to sterility, and the Chinese could no longer compete with European mass-produced porcelain.
Persian and Mongolian Porcelain
In Persia, between the 10th and 16th centuries, a translucent type of porcelain, entirely unlike that of the Chinese, was made be skilled artist-craftsmen, luster plates, were unsurpassed in their decorative quality.
The Mongol court also made important advances in porcelain techniques. During the mid-14th century, the first dated examples of underglazed porcelain were manufactured (David vases, Percival David Foundation, London). The technology had long existed to produce fine porcelain, but adding colored decoration presented serious problems because few substances could withstand the high temperatures needed to fire the white clay body. In the Yuan period it was discovered that ground cobalt could be mixed with water and painted on an unfired piece of porcelain. In the kiln, the blackish pigment turned a rich shade of blue. This innovation began the famous tradition of blue-and-white ware, which for centuries would be created for markets in China, the Muslim countries, and Europe. Copper oxide was also used successfully as a decorative agent in the same way, creating the class of porcelains known as underglaze red.
Japanese porcelain
The art of pottery was introduced into Japan from Korea, although many Japanese potters studied their trade in China proper. The development of ceramics was slow, but by 1300 some Japanese porcelains were finer that the Chinese. Common pottery and stoneware, however, continued to have a high value. They often had a translucent glaze and underglaze decoration.
At the beginning of the Edo period, kaolin was discovered near Arita, in northern Kyushu, which is still a major pottery center. This discovery enabled Japanese potters to make their own hard, pure white porcelain. One type, Imari ware (named for its port of export), was so popular in 17th-century Europe that even the Chinese imitated it. Its bright-colored designs were inspired by ornate lacquer work, screens, and textiles. By the late Edo period (1800-1867) Imari ware declined. Kakiemon (persimmon) porcelain, made in Arita, was a far more refined, classically shaped ware, even when its motifs were similar to Imari ware. Both wares used overglaze enamels. Nabeshima ware, also of high quality and similar to silk textiles in its designs, was reserved for members of that family and their friends; only in the Meiji era (1868-1912) was it sold commercially and imitated. The designs were first drawn on thin tissue, and then in underglaze blue lines; the enamel colors were added and heat-fused after the glaze firing. In eastern Japan in the Edo period, Kutani was the porcelain center. Kutani vessels were grayish in color because of impurities in the clay, and their designs were bolder than those of Arita and Imari wares. Kyoto, formerly a center for enameled pottery, became famous for its porcelain in the 19th century. In the Edo period, some 10,000 kilns were active in Japan
European Porcelain
The first soft-paste porcelains, cream rather than white in color, were made in Italy in the 16th century. The technique of making hard-paste porcelain was developed by the German alchemist John Friedrich Böttger in 1708. He invented the Meissen porcelain technique, making possible European production of the porcelain previously imported from Asia. A factory was established in Meissen, Germany, in 1710. Because Böttger did some of his early work near the city of Dresden, Meissen porcelain is sometimes known as Dresden porcelain.
The early success of Meissen was due in part to the high artistic level of its decoration. Meissen was the preferred European porcelain until about 1756, when Sèvres became increasingly popular. Sèvres, the most celebrated French porcelain, was first produced in Vincennes in 1738. Through the influence of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV, the factory was moved from Vincennes to Sèvres in 1756. Sèvres porcelain is renowned for its richly colored backgrounds and white panels decorated with birds. The production of hard-paste porcelain began in Limoges in 1771, when deposits of kaolin were discovered near that city. In 1784 the Limoges factory became a subsidiary of the royal factory in Sèvres.
Commercially produced ceramics after 1860 were of high quality. Some of the finest were and still are made by the Royal Porcelain factory in Copenhagen. The introduction of the art nouveau style, the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the ideas of the Bauhaus school in the 1920s all influenced industrial ceramic design.
English porcelain
The greatest name in ceramic annals in England is that of Josiah Wedgwood, who, after the completion of his apprenticeship in the "Art, Mistery, Occupation or Employment of Thrower and Handling," began work in 1749. Wedgwood has been called "the founder of modern pottery manufacture," and his pottery works, established in 1759 at Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, continue to the present day.
A colleague of Darwin in experimentation, in the days when potting was regarded as a peasant craft in England, Edgwood improved upon the unglazed stoneware. A tea set of his ware was ordered by Queen Charlotte. A dinner service of 952 pieces was made for the Empress Catherine II of Russia. His most famous work is "Portland Vase," so-called because it was purchased by the Duke of Portland.
The best early English porcelain was made in Chelsea in 1745. After its factory was sold to one in Derby in 1769, neoclassical style dominated domestic ware and figurines. In the 1740s a patent was taken out by porcelain makers at Bow in London, using bone ash in the clay body. The Lowestoft factory in Suffolk (established about 1757) used a similar formula. Glassy soft-paste porcelain was made in Staffordshire in the 18th century; Josiah Spode of that town was credited with having introduced the Staffordshire variety of Bow bone china.
American porcelain
The first whiteware manufactured in the colonies was in 1685 at Burlington, N.J. By the middle of the 18th century there were over a hundred potters in Pennsylvania. The earliest dated example of the popular Pennsylvania Dutch decorated slip ware was a carved white dish of 1762.
Inexpensive transfer-printed wares for mass sale were popular in 19th-century England and on the Continent, as were relief-decorated wares. These spread to the United States, along with the manganese-brown Rockingham glazes developed in England in the early 19th century; the latter were popular with New Jersey and Ohio potters. Mass-produced ware gradually displaced the dominant U.S. folk pottery, a vigorous salt-glazed stoneware.
In 1793 the firm Norton and Fenton established in Bennington, Vt. They made Rockingham ware, with a dark brown glaze, and Parian ware, an imitation of the ivory white marble of Paros. The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880, was one of the most famous. The original Rookwood was a stoneware decorated with slip glaze colors, chiefly in shades of brown and green. Later they made a vellum ware in which hand painted decorations were covered with transparent mat glaze.
The Cowan Pottery, in Rocky River, Ohio, operating from 1913 to 1931, specialized in ceramic sculpture and artistic wares. In 1903 Adelaide Alsop Robineau opened a pottery in Syracuse, N.Y. She made porcelain with the design in relief against a cutout background. Her work did much to raise the standards of pottery in the U.S.
It can not longer be said that the best porcelain comes from Europe.
Manufacturing
of porcelain
The porcelain industry in America uses a porcelain paste consisting of 38.5% kaolin, 6% ball clay (or old clay reworked), 16% feldspar, and 38% quartz. These ingredients are mixed by mechanical blenders and kneads until they form a soft clay. The clay paste is then made into a suspension or slip by the addition of paste water and small amounts of calcium carbonate or silicate of soda.
Kaolin--(Chinese kaoling, "high ridge"), or china clay, a pure, soft, white clay of variable but usually low plasticity that retains its white color when fired. The material was first obtained from a hill called Kaoling and was sent to Europe in the early 18th century. Pure kaolin is used in the manufacture of fine porcelain and china; impure varieties are used in making pottery, stoneware, and bricks; as filler for pigments; and in the manufacture of paper. The chief constituent of kaolin is the mineral kaolinite, a hydrous aluminum silicate, formed by the decomposition of aluminum silicates, particularly feldspar. Kaolin is now mined primarily in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Alabama. The term kaolin is often extended to include other porcelain clays not discolored by firing.
Cyanite, also kyanite, mineral aluminum silicate, found in long, triclinic, blade-shaped crystals. Cyanite has a glassy or pearly luster and is usually blue. It has a specific gravity of about 3.6, and its hardness varies from 4 to 7, depending on the direction in which the Crystal is scratched. The mineral has been used as gem but is most commonly mined as a material for porcelains to be used at high temperatures, as in spark plugs. Cyanite is mined in North Carolina and Georgia and also in France, Switzerland (where the best gem-quality stones are obtained), and Austria.
Casting
One technique of shaping porcelain is to pour the slip into plaster of Paris molds for casting.
The ancient method of throwing on the potter's wheel is also used industrially. Spun electrically at the rate of 400 times a minute, the wheel carries a plaster mold in the center onto which the "bat" of paste is thrown. The paste is pressed down by hand and shaped into a disk by the revolution of the wheel.
Firing
After cast has been dried, it is placed in the biscuit kiln in a flint-bedded earth ware sager and fired at a temperature of about 1280°-1400°C (2336°-2552°F) for over two days under close supervision. If the porcelain ware is overfired it blisters; if it is underfired, it lacks the necessary translucency.
After the porcelain has been cooled for two days, it is being decorated.
Decorating of porcelain
Porcelain ware is usually decorated by hand-painting or transfer-print.
Hand-decorating made with a soft hair brushes, pen or squirt. Paints, sometimes referred to as "mineral colors," made from metallic oxides, flux, and residual oils. They come in dry powdered form and mixed with medium or mineral oil to the consistency of toothpaste. Hand-decorating is done in stages with firing after each stage. Colors are made to mature and become a part of the glaze when they are fired properly. The first stage of painting is fired at a higher temperature (1443°-1517°F). In the succeeding fires the temperature does not need to be as hot unless the colors have been applied heavily. After each firing the porcelain is cooled off for at least 12 hours.
Transfer-print is made by decalcomania process, in which the pattern is transferred to the surface of the article through the application of decalcomania paper. The sizing holds the mineral colors of the design in place, when the paper is sponged off. Designs printed from steel plates or lithographic stones are transferred to the porcelain in this manner but without the use of a sizing.
Then light firing in the decorating kiln to fix the colors. This lasts for eight to ten hours at a temperature ranging from 700° to 800°C.
The transfer-print decoration is next protected by dipping the article in a colorless transparent glaze, containing melted feldspar, kaolin, quartz, lead oxide, and boric acid. Unless the best material is used in this glaze it is likely to cracks. To fuse surface and body of the piece into a hard, glassy, homogenous texture firing lasts from 20 to 30 hours at a temperature of 1400° to 1600°C.
Hand-painted and transfer-print decoration applied after the piece has been fired with the transparent glaze is called overglazed decoration. Overglaze colors consist of vitrifiable enamels in the form of fusible glass power plus aniline dyes. Enamel-decorated ware is fired by gas for eight to ten hours to fuse the glaze with the design. The temperature may range from 800° to 700°C.
Another method of overglaze decoration is gold encrustation. After the design has been etched into the glazed surface with hydrofluoric acid, the ware is covered with several layers of gold. A temperature of about 600°C is used in the decorations in bright gold or matte (burnished) gold.
The manufacture of most porcelain pieces from casting to burnishing takes three weeks.
