Why is good “porcelain” called “china”, and “china” plumbing fixtures called “porcelain”?
And, is this to imply porcelain invented in China?
Why ask why…
-JInx
It wasn’t “invented” the two ingedients, are both, like all clays, mined. It just so happened that they were first discovered in China.
-PSM
That type of ceramic work was invented in china and ship loads of “china” porcelain were imported into Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Later European countries copied the process but “china porcelain” kept its name. I recently saw an wxhibition of objects recovered from the wreck of a Spanish galleon which went down near the Philippines. It was loaded with china meant for Spain by way of central America. You can understand why the stuff was expensive.
I believe that type of white clay is also called china clay.
To reiterate (and possibly clarify) what the others have said:
[li] China, the country, was among the first cultures to develop production of vitreous ceramicware.[/li]
[li]One type of this ceramicware - porcelain - became very well known due to it’s almost translucent quality. The type of clay used to make porcelain has no “grog”, a gritty filler which allows ceramics to be thrown or hand-built much more easily. Porcelain is much more difficult to produce than your average ceramicware.[/li]
[li]When porcelain became marketable in Europe, it was called after its county of origin - China: a “China dish” or a “China figurine”. My WAG is the noun was dropped off, and the “China” adjective became the noun.[/li]
Plumbing fixtures with a vitreous surface were probably referred to as “China” because of their textural similarities to China porcelain, not because China invented toilets, bathtubs, or the process of baking a vitreous glaze onto the underlying metal. Again, that’s just a WAG.
Am I the only one who gets a kick out of the fact that most of his cutlery is stamped “STAINLESS CHINA”?
To the best of my recollection, the term “China”, as applied to porcelain, really took off when they reinvented porcelain in England and called the resulting creations “bone china”. But I’m too lazy to do a search this second.