History of Chinese Porcelain Timeline

Apart from faience imitations, the soft-paste Medici porcelain made in 16th-century Florence represented the first serious European attempt to reproduce Chinese porcelain, though it achieved little success.

Experiments at Rouen produced the earliest soft-paste porcelain in France.

English ceramic success in the 18th century rested largely on soft-paste porcelain and refined earthenwares such as creamware, which competed with porcelain and damaged faience industries in France and elsewhere.

The first important French soft-paste porcelain was made at the Saint-Cloud factory before 1702.

In 1705, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, who had extensive scientific knowledge, was joined by Johann Friedrich Böttger in the European effort to perfect porcelain manufacture.

A workshop note records that the first specimen of hard, white, vitrified European porcelain was produced in 1708.

Image source: Meissen porcelain

In Saxony, Tschirnhaus produced a hard, white, translucent porcelain specimen using ingredients including kaolin and alabaster mined near Colditz.

In March 1709, Böttger reported to Augustus the Strong that he could make porcelain.

The Meissen factory was established in 1710 after the development of a suitable kiln and glaze for Böttger's porcelain. Its wares required firing at temperatures up to 1,400 °C.

In 1712, the French Jesuit François Xavier d'Entrecolles revealed many Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets in letters that were soon published in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine.

Image source: François Xavier d'Entrecolles

In and around Venice, Francesco Vezzi produced hard-paste porcelain from about 1720 to 1735. Surviving examples are very rare.

A soft-paste porcelain factory was established at Chantilly in 1730.

Doccia porcelain of Florence was founded in 1735 and remains in production.

The Vincennes porcelain factory was established in 1740 and moved to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756.

Thomas Briand demonstrated the first English soft-paste porcelain to the Royal Society in 1742. It is believed to have been based on the Saint-Cloud formula.

Capodimonte porcelain was produced from 1743 to 1759 before the factory was moved from Naples to Madrid by its royal owner.

In 1744, Elizabeth of Russia signed an agreement to establish the first Russian porcelain manufactory, ending the country's previous dependence on imports.

In 1749, Thomas Frye took out a patent for a porcelain containing bone ash, an important precursor to bone china.

A soft-paste porcelain factory was established at Mennecy in 1750.

The Le Nove factory produced porcelain from about 1752 to 1773, later reviving production from 1781 to 1802.

Vincennes porcelain, moved to Sèvres in 1756, was whiter and freer of imperfections than its French rivals and held a leading position in France and Europe during the second half of the 18th century.

Image source: Manufacture nationale de Sèvres

William Cookworthy's Plymouth factory, established in 1768, used kaolin from Cornwall and china stone to make hard-paste porcelain with a body composition resembling early-18th-century Chinese porcelain.

Although bone china was originally developed in England in 1748, most English porcelain from the late 18th century onward has been bone china.

After a 15-year gap, Naples porcelain was produced from 1771 to 1806, specializing in Neoclassical styles.

After the Imperial Porcelain Factory became a major European producer by 1760, other Russian factories opened, including Gardner porcelain, Dulyovo, Kuznetsovsky, Popovsky, and Gzhel.

Because glazed porcelain is durable, impermeable, and does not rust, it has been used for personal hygiene since at least the third quarter of the 17th century.

Porcelain had been used for electrical insulators since at least 1878, with another account reporting earlier porcelain insulators on the telegraph line between Frankfurt and Berlin.

During the 20th century, ceramics remained a popular art form under Soviet governments, which supported the medium and increasingly gave it a propagandist role.

Modern architectural examples include the Dakin Building in Brisbane, California, and Houston's Gulf Building, which had a 21-metre porcelain logo on its exterior when constructed in 1929.

Porcelain tile is a dense, fine-grained, smooth, usually impervious ceramic product generally made by dust pressing. Italy was the global leader in 2006, producing more than 380 million square metres.

The global high-voltage insulator market was estimated at US$4.95 billion in 2015, with porcelain accounting for just over 48 percent.

In 2018, a porcelain bushing insulator made by NGK in Handa, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, was certified by Guinness World Records as the world's largest ceramic structure.

In 2021, the global market for porcelain tableware was estimated to be worth US$22.1 billion.