“Of all these manufactories, the most famous appears to be that of King-te-chin, in the province of Kiangsi. It has long been the site of a fabrique, as in A. D. 583 the then emperor ordered the inhabitants of the district now called King-te-chin to send him porcelain vases. The old name was Chang-nan-chin, and the present one was assumed in the period King-te (A. D. 1004 to 1007), whence its name. In 1712 Père d’Entrecolles states that there were three thousand porcelain furnaces in this town, which found employment for an immense multitude of people. The manufactory has suffered severely, as we have already stated, during the rebellion of the Taipings.
“Porcelain is termed by the Chinese Yao, a name which seems to have been brought into use at the commencement of the Tang dynasty (A. D. 618), before which it had been called Tao. The word ‘porcelain’ is European, possibly Italian, and is supposed to have been derived from the similarity of the glazed surface to that of the cowrie-shell (porcellana), which itself took its name from its form (porcella, a little pig). Marco Polo employs the word in both senses. In French mediæval inventories the word ‘pourcelaine’ is often found, and evidently denoted a substance which could be sculptured. M. de Laborde has collected a number of quotations, in the valuable ‘Glossaire’ appended to his catalogue, of the enamels in the Louvre, and has come to the conclusion that mother-of-pearl was intended; it will, however, be safer to consider that the word was used for any kind of shell, the cowrie and other shells being as well, or even better, adapted for carving than mother-of-pearl. In later inventories the word seems to have been used both for shell and Oriental porcelain.
“The claim of greatest antiquity that has been hitherto put forward for specimens found out of the limits of the Celestial Empire have been in favor of the little Chinese bottles, which were stated by Rossellini and others to have been found in undisturbed Egyptian tombs, dating from not less than 1800 years B. C. This claim has, however, been disallowed. The bottles are of good white porcelain, painted in colors, and bearing inscriptions. Now, we have seen that the Chinese themselves do not claim a greater antiquity for the invention of porcelain than between B. C. 206 and A. D. 87. Color-painting must have been introduced at a much later date. The inscriptions are in the grass-character, which was not invented till B. C. 48, and contain passages from poems which were not written till the eighth century of our era. They are, in fact, identical with snuff-bottles still for sale in China. Their introduction, therefore, into Egyptian tombs must have been due to the fraud of Arab workmen. The whole subject has been gone into by M. Stanislas Julien, in the preface to the ‘History of King-te-chin,’ as well as by others.
“The next claim has been made on behalf of the murrhine vases of the ancients, which are described as ‘cooked in Parthian fires.’ Now, it is probable that, at the commencement of our era, Chinese porcelain was not far advanced beyond pottery or stone-ware, and little superior to the so-called Egyptian porcelain. No fragments of Chinese vases have been found with Greek or Roman antiquities, nor of imitations of them in other materials, so as to correspond with the false murrhine of the ancients. It is therefore far more probable, as has been suggested by Mr. Nesbitt, in his notes on the ‘History of Glass-making,’ that the murrhine vases were made of agates and other hard stones, of which the colors had been modified in the East by heating and staining. The false murrhines would then be the glass bowls imitating hard stones, but with various strange tints not to be found in natural stones.
“In 1171 we first find any distinct mention of porcelain out of China. In that year Saladin sent to Nur-ed-din various presents, among which were forty pieces of Chinese porcelain.
“Marco Polo, traveling in 1280, visited one of the sites of the porcelain manufacture, and mentions that it was exported all over the world. It is probable that he may have been the means of calling the attention of his countrymen to this production of the far East. Many other notices from travelers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries might be cited. It was probably through Egypt that it reached Europe; at any rate, a present of porcelain vases was sent by the Sultan of Egypt, in 1487, to Lorenzo de’ Medici. To the Portuguese is no doubt due the first direct importation of Chinese wares into Europe, in which they were followed by the various India companies of Holland, England, France, Sweden, etc.
“It may be convenient shortly to describe the mode of making porcelain in China, as derived from the letters of Père d’Entrecolles (1712 to 1722), and the ‘History of King-te-chin,’ in which M. Julien has reproduced the Chinese plates illustrating the processes.
“Porcelain in China is usually formed of two materials: the one, termed in Chinese Pe-tun-tse, is a white, fusible material—a mixture of feldspar and quartz, obtained from a pounded rock by repeated washing, and formed into cakes or bricks, whence its Chinese name, ‘white-clay bricks;’ the other, termed Kaolin from its locality, is infusible, being a hydrated silicate of alumina, derived from the decomposed feldspar of granite; this is also formed into cakes. These two materials, having been thoroughly cleansed, are kneaded together in varying proportions, and form a clay ready for the potter. The wet clay is turned on the wheel or potter’s table, and, after passing through the hands of several workmen, who add handles and other accessories made in moulds, smooth the surface, etc., the vessel is put out to dry, the foot still remaining a solid mass; any decoration in blue, or other colors which require to be highly fired, is then added. The glaze is next applied, either by dipping, or by blowing it on with a tube. This strengthens the vessel sufficiently to enable the workmen to fashion the foot on the wheel, and to inscribe any mark; this being likewise coated with glaze, the vessel is ready for the furnace. The pieces of porcelain are packed in clay seggars to protect them from injury, and placed according to the degree of heat which each specimen requires. The furnace is then lighted, the entrance walled up, and it is kept supplied with wood during a night and a day, when it is allowed to cool and the porcelain removed. If enamel-colors are to be applied, it then passes into the hands of the painters, who are very numerous, and each confined to his own special detail; any gilding or silvering is added at this stage. It is then baked again, at a much lower temperature, in a small muffle or an open furnace. It should be mentioned that the glaze is formed of Pe-tun-tse, mixed with fern-ashes and lime, but other materials are occasionally used; for instance, Hwa-chi (steatite) is employed, sometimes mixed with the glaze, as well as sometimes with the paste of the porcelain. Any colors which will bear to be highly fired, and are required to cover the whole surface, are mixed with the glaze before it is applied.
“There is considerable difficulty in distinguishing glazed vases of Chinese pottery from true porcelain, as the colored glaze in many cases conceals the material, and the thickness prevents their being translucent—a distinguishing quality of porcelain. The substance of many of the vases is coarse, sometimes gray or even red, and such as would, in European fabriques, be termed stone-ware. By Chinese writers, however, no distinction seems to be made, and even enamels on copper are included in the term they use for porcelain. It has, therefore, been thought best to class together glazed Chinese pottery and porcelain, though some of the specimens are undoubtedly stone-ware.”