Porcelain

Porcelain is a hard, translucent ceramic material made by firing raw materials, chiefly kaolin clay together with feldspar and quartz, in a kiln to temperatures between about 1,200 and 1,400 degrees Celsius, a heat that vitrifies the clay body and forms the mineral mullite within it, giving porcelain a strength, whiteness, resonance and light-transmitting translucency that ordinary earthenware and stoneware do not share. The material developed in China over several centuries of ceramic experimentation, with proto-porcelain wares already made in the Shang dynasty period and true, fully vitrified porcelain achieved by the Eastern Han dynasty, roughly the second century AD. Because Chinese potters controlled the technique for many centuries before it reached other regions, Chinese porcelain became one of the most prized manufactured goods traded along the Silk Road and by sea, and the word china entered English as a synonym for the material itself.