Since the beginning of time, terracotta and ceramic had been the basis of everyday utensils.
However, during the Han Dynasty in China, kaolin replaced ceramic mixtures ever known for their hardness and translucence and since then this white paste made of feldspar and kaolin had been used to create every kind of object both practical and decorative.
At the end of the XIII century, it was Marco Polo who made the “White Gold” famous in Europe. Infact when he came back from one of his expeditions he brought with him some models.
Since then many attempts had been made to reproduce the same paste but because of the lack of clays with high percentage of kaolin in Europe, they all failed. Only at the beginning of the XIII century an alchemist at the Saxony Court, purely by chance, succeeded in reproducing the first European porcelain.
In 1704, at Albrecchtsburg, J.F. Bottger was experimenting with new mixtures made of earths and minerals to get gold and precious stones but instead, he obtained a red and hard paste that, for its peculiarity, he called “Jasper” comparing it to quartz a semi-precious stone. The hardness of this material was similar to the paste coming from China.
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