What Are Porcelain Vases?

The material we know as porcelain originated in China over 3,500 years ago. By Marco Polo's arrival in 1295 A.C.E., shortly after the end of the Song dynasty (960 A.C.E. to 1279 A.C.E), white Chinese porcelain had reached the height of perfection. As Europe would soon discover, porcelain's delicacy and surprising strength made it the perfect material for crafting beautiful bowls, dishes, plates, and vases.

The History of Porcelain Vases
Though few people realize it, the word porcelain is actually suggestive of its Chinese origins. At the time Polo visited China, smooth, shiny, and porcelain-like cowrie shells were being used by the Chinese as currency. The similar appearance of porcelain and cowrie shells led Italians to call porcelain porcellana, or cowrie shell, a word that in French became porcelain.

For centuries, porcelain vases were referred to as China or fine China, because Europeans were continually unable to manufacture real porcelain. Some porcelain vases and other items were created in Florence in the late 16th Century, but they were made from fragile soft paste porcelain. It wasn't until 1708 that two Europeans- physicist and an alchemist - discovered the critical element: kaolin.

The Composition of Porcelain Vases
Porcelain is a ceramic material that is hard, translucent, and vitrified, which means glass or glasslike. Chinese porcelain was made from a mix of white China clay, known as kaolin, and China stone known as petuntse. When fired to a temperature above 1,300 F, these two materials fuse, creating porcelain.

Kaolin is a clay mineral composed of unmeltable aluminum hydrosilicate. The European experimenters - Bottger and Von Tschirnhauser -combined this with feldspar and white quartz. The composition of the porcelain created from this mixture is part glass, part quartz, and part mullite - an aluminum silicate with another common name: porcelainite.

Today, porcelain vases can be composed of many different materials: kaolinite, bone ash, ball-clay, alabaster, feldspar, quartz, petuntse, glass, and steatite. The clays commonly used to make porcelain are known as short clays, which means they are less cohesive and plastic than other clays, and their moisture levels must be closely monitored.

The composition of all these materials produces the qualities you've come to associate with porcelain vases: translucence, strength, hardness, and durability. Because of this material strength, porcelain vases are thin, delicate, and exceedingly beautiful.