The word “porcelain” appeared some time during Middle Age Europe. At first it seemed to have been applied to rare pieces of artistry in carved shell or mother-of-pearl, because their white pearly surface recalled the sheen of the cowrie or Venus-shell, called by the Italians “Porcellana.” When Marco Polo published his account of China in 1298, he gave the name to the material now known as Chinese porcelain, even though he used the same word to designate works carved in shell.
It was the Chinese discovery of the possibility of making a translucent pottery from mixtures of natural clays and powdered rocks that formed the starting point of all modern porcelains. The method was slowly elaborated and brought to perfection by them by the 18th century. The potter prepares mixtures of clay, from which he uses the purest and whitest procurable, called kao-lin. Along with kao-lin finest crystallized rocks are added as well as pure silica in the form of ground white sand or pulverized quartz to form the potter’s clay. After a firing of very high temperature between 1350 and 1500 Celsius to fuse the shaped clay and its glaze side by side, the result is a dense, hard, white porcelain – translucent and sufficiently thin that it elicits a ringing musical note if sharply struck, of which are the quality standard for Chinese porcelain. A piece of first class glazed porcelain would consist of many layers of different silicates, some of them of excessive thinness and none of them sharply defined, ranging from the outer skin of the glaze, which is clearest, to the body itself, which is a felted mass of minute crystalline rods imbedded in a more glassy substance. When light falls upon this piece of porcelain it penetrates these successive layers, which filters, softens, and subdues it, so that the lowest depths shimmers and glistens with the light they reflect to the observer’s eye.
In the case of bone-porcelain, the glaze and the glazing process are entirely different. The shaped porcelain is completely fired before the glaze is applied. When they are removed from the kiln after the first firing, they are slightly porous. Then they are coated with a fine layer of powdered glaze, which is usually a glass rich in lead-oxide, or borax, allowing for a lower melting temperature. The pieces are then fired a second time to melt this glaze coating. Glazes made in this way are always thinner, more transparent and brilliant, more “glassy” than the traditional porcelain, but lack the subtle depth and unctuous richness of the original, because they affect the light less as it passes through them.
By the 9th century, porcelain and stoneware imported from China into Baghdad via the Silk Road fueled the astonishing rise of Islamic pottery. The approximate date of porcelain’s first arrival is suggested by a passage written in 1059 by Muhammad ibn al-Husain Baihaki. He stated that Ali ibn-Isa, governor of Khurasan, sent as a present to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid “20 pieces of Chinese Imperial porcelain, the like of which had never been seen at the Caliph’s court before” in addition to two thousand other pieces of porcelain. Further references onward in Arabic literature praised Chinese porcelain, which had reached Mesopotamia and Egypt by sea route around India, while Persia received it from overland routes through Mongolia and Turkestan. The order of preferences were the “apricot-colored” variety, which were celadons from Yüeh Chou, also known as Yue ware, of greenish or brownish color resembling the grey-green Damascus apricot, the “cream-colored,” and the “mottled” variety, a green-and-brown splashed stoneware, all of which were made in the Tang period (AD 618-906). Chinese porcelain and stoneware created a demand for fine pottery that Islamic craftsmen quickly exploited, first by imitating the Chinese wares, then by adding elaborations of their own.
The Persian scholars Ta’alibi and Beruni, writing in the first half of the 11th century, referred with admiration to the translucency of Chinese porcelain, to its thinness, and to its resonance when struck. None of these qualities were present in the Islamic pottery of those times. Persian craftsmen then used a hard white paste with a transparent alkaline glaze to imitate the texture and style of Chinese Ting and Ying-ching porcelain, which then spread and completely revolutionized the character of fine Islamic pottery from Saljuq times onwards. In a Constantinople library holds a manuscript treatise on the technique of the Saljuq potters written in 1301 by Abulqasim of Kashan, who belonged to a distinguished Persian family of potters. He described the preparation of a glass “frit” from powdered quartz-pebbles and potash melted together in almost equal quantities. This “frit”, powdered and mixed with water, served as the alkaline glaze.
By the 14th century, mentions of Oriental porcelain were found in inventories of kings and nobles of Europe. In the year 1447, it was held in such high esteem that the French historian Mathieu d’Escouchy recorded a letter addressed to the Sultan of Babylon by a certain Jean de Village, an agent of the famous French merchant Jacques Coeur of Bourges, asking for certain trading privileges in the dominions of the Sultan, which concluded with the curious request: “I have sent you, through the said Ambassador, a gift – namely: three porcelain bowls from Sinant, two large open porcelain platters, two green porcelain jars, and two decorative porcelain bouquets.” Oriental porcelain was then solicited as a present from one monarch to another, and was collected by the crowned heads of Europe, the likes of the Medici of Florence, Emperor Charles V, and King Frances I of France.
In my cupboard I have a stack of 20 rice bowls. They’re not porcelain, but they are simply decorated, white, and thin. All together they weigh about the same as my four salad plates. Their characteristics remind me of the Tao concept of empty space:
“Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.“*
Perhaps coincidentally, this concept of empty space resonates with the preference for a thin and translucent pottery. We may marvel at the subtle beauty of porcelain, but in its emptiness so much more is held.
*Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching. A rendition by Ursula K. Le Guin.
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