Clay to Clarity: The Art of Chinese Porcelain

China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). President Xi Jinping wields concentrated power as both head of state and party leader. The political system prioritizes stability, national unity, and economic prosperity while maintaining tight control over political dissent, the media, and civil society. Recently, the government has concentrated on strengthening party leadership, tackling economic issues, expressing China’s global role, and striking a balance between state control and ongoing development. However, China has beauty in other areas, particularly art. Let’s have a deep look in Porcelain.

The text below is the excerpt of the book Chinese Art (ISBN: 9781783106998), written by Stephen W. Bushell, published by Parkstone International.

Porcelain was certainly invented in China. This is acknowledged in England by the adoption of the word “china” as equivalent to porcelain. Even in Persia, the only country to which an independent invention of the material has been attributed by some writers and where Chinese porcelain has been known and imitated for centuries, the word chini carries a similar connotation.

For the creation of a scientific classification of ceramic products, it may be necessary to define here the distinctive characteristics of porcelain. Porcelain ought to have a white, translucent, hard paste, not to be scratched by steel, homogeneous, resonant and vitrified, exhibiting, when broken, a conchoidal fracture of fine grain and brilliant aspect. These qualities, inherent in porcelain, make it impermeable to water and enable it to resist the action of frost even when uncoated with glaze. Among the characteristics of the paste given above, translucency and vitrification define porcelain best. If either of these two qualities is absent, the material is considered a different kind of pottery. If the paste possess all the other properties, with the exception of translucency, it is stoneware; if the paste is not vitrified, it belongs to the category of terracotta or of faïence.

The Chinese define porcelain under the name of tz’u, a character first found in books of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.), as a hard, compact, fine-grained pottery (t’ao), and distinguish it by the clear, musical note which it gives out on percussion, and by the test that it cannot be scratched by a knife.

They do not lay so much stress on the whiteness of the paste, nor on its translucency, so that some of the pieces may fail in these two points when the fabric is coarse; and yet it would be difficult to separate them from the porcelain class.

Porcelain may be divided into two classes: Hard paste, containing only natural elements in the composition of the body and the glaze. Soft paste, where the body is an artificial combination of various materials fused by the action of the fire, in which a compound called a frit has been used as a substitute for a natural rock.

All Chinese porcelain is of the hard paste variety. The body consists essentially of two elements, the white clay, or kaolin, the unctuous and infusible element, which gives plasticity to the paste, and the felspathic stone, or petuntse, which is fusible at a high temperature, and gives transparency to the porcelain.

It is generally agreed that porcelain was first made in China, but authorities differ widely in fixing a date for its invention. The Chinese attribute its invention to the Han Dynasty when a new character tz’u was coined to designate, presumably, a new substance. The official memoir on Porcelain Administration in the topography of Fou-liang, the first edition of which was published in 1270, says that, according to local tradition, the ceramic works at Hsin-p’ing (an old name of Fou-liang) were founded in the time of the Han Dynasty, and were in constant operation for centuries.

This is confirmed by T’ang Ying, the celebrated superintendent of the Imperial potteries, appointed in 1728, who states in his autobiography that the result of his research shows that porcelain was first made during the Han Dynasty at Ch’ang-nan (Ching-tê-chên), in the district of Fouliang. The industrial environment of the period lends a certain plausibility to the theory, as we know that quantities of glass vessels were being imported at the time from the workshops of Syria and Egypt, and it seems natural that experiments should be made to fabricate something similar at the Chinese potteries.

The eminent Japanese art critic, Kakasu Okakura, in his Ideals of the East, suggests that the alchemists of the Han Dynasty, in their prolonged research for the elixir vitae and the philosopher’s stone, may have somehow made the discovery, and he arrives at the conclusion that “we may ascribe the origin of the wonderful porcelain-glaze of China to their accidental discoveries.”

In the Wei Dynasty (221-264), which succeeded the Han, we read of a glazed celadon ware made at Lo-yang for the use of the palace, and in the Chin Dynasty (265-419), we have the first mention of blue porcelain, produced at Wên-chou, in the province of Chehkiang, the progenitor of the sky-blue glazes tinted with cobalt which afterwards became so famous. The short-lived Sui Dynasty (581-617) is distinguished for a kind of green porcelain (lu tz’u), invented by a President of the Board of Works named Ho Chou, to replace green glass, the composition of which had been lost after its introduction by artisans from Northern India about 424 A.D.

Meanwhile, much progress must have been made in the ceramic production of the province of Kiangsi, as it is recorded in the topography of Fou-liang, referred to above, that in the beginning of the reign of the founder of the Tang Dynasty, T’ao Yü, a native of the district, brought up a quantity of porcelain to the capital in Shensi, which he presented to the emperor as “imitation jade.” In the fourth year (621 A.D.) of this reign, the name of the district was changed to Hsin-p’ing, and a decree was issued directing Ho Chung ch’u and his fellow potters to send up a regular supply of porcelain for the use of the imperial palace.

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Furthermore, you can view Chinese and Asian’s artworks in the exhibitions below:

• Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: Selections from the Collection in the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Through 31 May, 2026)
• Chinese Galleries in Philadelphia Museum of Art (Ongoing)
• Mythical, Divine, Demonic: Animal Imagery in South Asian Art in Philadelphia Museum of Art (Ongoing)
• Arts of Asia Galleries in Denver Art Museum (Ongoing)
• Touching the Divine: Love and devotion in Asian Art in Art Gallery of South Australia (28 February – 26 April, 2026)