James Burke TV - Ronald Top TV - Beautiful Things: A Passion for Porcelain TV - Lars Tharp: Treasures of Chinese Porcelain TV - Mike Miodownik TV -
Porcelain. People went potty about it. James Burke, Connections s2e6 1994: Echoes of the Past, BBC 1994
Delph: and it’s really very nice. Delph was a seventeenth century import. ibid.
The Delph potters came up with an imitation so good only the Chinese could tell the difference. ibid.
By the eighteenth century Delph had pretty much cornered the whole European pottery market ... [Josiah] Wedgwood got his start in life ... Queensware he called it ... ‘If the Queen uses it, so should you’. ibid.
The exquisite porcelain of the far east was the most sought after tableware of the eighteenth century’s wealthiest people. However, the secret of its manufacture had evaded Europeans for hundreds of years. Ronald Top, More Industrial Revelations s: Europe s4e8 – Perfect Porcelain, Discovery 2006
Kaolin powder was brought into Delph along canals by barges. ibid.
For many of us French porcelain is something we consider to be at best kitsch and at worse vulgar ... Sevres’ porcelain is the fusion of art, industry and absolute monarchy all coming together to create something exquisite – absolute perfection. Beautiful Things: A Passion for Porcelain, BBC 2013
Porcelain was a thing of wonder, but the Chinese closely guarded the secrets of its recipe. ibid.
Kaolin & Quartz and other minerals. ibid.
Porcelain was becoming the thing to own. ibid.
This little Chinese bowl once belonged to Elizabeth I. It’s made of a material which was unknown in Europe until the 1500s, and when that material arrived it caused a sensation. In the sixteenth century Porcelain became a cult item amongst the very wealthy. By the 18th century the fever had spread to the middle classes. The making of porcelain was shrouded in mystery. Lars Tharp, Treasure of Chinese Porcelain, BBC 2017
Porcelain was harder than our toughest stonewares; if you hit it with a spoon it rang like a bell … Better still, it came from far-off China, and only the Chinese knew how to make it. ibid.
An opportunity for conspicuous consumption. ibid.
An essential ingredient … and the material we call Kaolin. ibid.
Kaolin is simply clay; it occurs all over [Jingdezhen] the world but the variety here is particularly fine. ibid.
It was China stone that made porcelain light and tough and in demand the world over, but what was it? … potash mica … provided a bright surface. ibid.
The finest ceramic then known on Earth – porcelain. The Chinese had held the secret of porcelain-making for over a thousand years. Finer, lighter, harder, whiter, with a glassy glaze. Porcelain was superior to any pottery we’d created in the West and it was highly prized: known as white gold. Mark Miodownik, Ceramics: How They Work, BBC 2017