White Chinese porcelains

An account of the factors involved in the imitation of Chinese porcelains with Western materials really needs a book to do justice to the subject, for much of the history of Western ceramics from the early 18th century onwards has been concerned with this problem. Even so, it was not until the late 19th century that hard porcelains began to be calculated directly from the ideal oxide proportions of

 Chinese and Japanese porcelains, while true micaceous haM-paste porcelains seem only to have been made experimentally in the West at S6vres in the 1880s and in Stoke-on-Trent in the early years of this century. Both research projects produced fascinating papers, and the work of Georges Vogt at S6vres, particularly, resulted in the most comprehensive and detailed account of the technology of Chinese porcelain production ever written. The S6vres and the Staffordshire porcelains were designed to mature at the typical firing temperatures for 19th-century Chinese porcelain of about 1280°C, but neither body became established commercially.

Modern hard-paste porcelains are made from mixtures of potash feldspar, quartz and china clay, and the only mica they contain is about 5-8% from the china clay. Many modern porcelains have been designed to be as near as possible to Far Eastern porcelains in their analyses, and bodies of this type can be calculated from the analyses of Chinese porcelains in this book, using the same method as described for glazes. The 'simultaneous' method of calculation that