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PEDIGREE & PROVENANCE Art Words & Terms


porcelain

Pronounced: por sa lin

What is porcelain?

Porcelain, often referred to as "china," is made from clay fired at very high temperatures. It is translucent and non-porous and can be used with or without a glaze.
If you can see through it, it's porcelain -- if not, it's pottery.



Who used this material and when?

The Chinese developed porcelain as early as the 7th century, the Japanese began using it in the 13th century, but it took the Europeans until the very early 18th century to discover the process. The technology traveled to America in the early 19th century.

Why not just use pottery?

Because of its delicate appearance, porcelain is usually considered to be more genteel than pottery. Beware this snobbism: the word porcelain derives from the Italian porcellana a shell resembling a private anatomical part of a female pig.


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More PEDIGREE & PROVENANCE:
P&P: Abstract Expressionism
P&P: Arte Povera
P&P: Ash Can School
P&P: bronze patina
P&P: citrine
P&P: Colorfield painting
P&P: Greek columns
P&P: Conceptual Art
P&P: coromandel
P&P: depression glass
P&P: enamel
P&P: encaustic
P&P: etching
P&P: faux
P&P: foreshortening
P&P: gouache
P&P: Iconography & Iconology
P&P: New Image painting
P&P: Newcomb pottery
P&P: parfleche
P&P: Pop Art
P&P: porcelain
P&P: realism
P&P: Senufo
P&P: Surrealism
P&P: turquoise

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

In the art & antiques world, experts bandy about arcane words as though they were part of everyone's standard vocabulary. To a fledgling collector, this practice can be maddening. In PEDIGREE & PROVENANCE, BIDDINGTON'S picks a word or phrase and gives it a good, hard going over: defining it, explaining it and showing how to use it.

Glance regularly at PEDIGREE & PROVENANCE, and soon you'll be able to toss those obscure phrases back at the experts with confidence and agility and be fully prepared to bid on items at BIDDINGTON'S upmarket, online art & antiques auctions.

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