When pieces of Chinese porcelain were first seen in the West, they were
so rare and exquisite that they very quickly became more valuable than
gold. Why? Because Europeans really had no idea how porcelain was made,
and the medieval Italian merchants who first brought porcelain to Europe
couldn't believe it was man made. The only thing that they could
compare it to was a cowry shell, because a cowry shell has that same
exquisite smooth surface as a piece of porcelain. In Italian, a cowry
shell is called a "Porcellino" - a little pig - because it kind of looks
like a little suckling pig, hence our word 'porcelain'. The Europeans
were immediately obsessed with the secret of porcelain manufacture,
leading to all kinds of crazy theories: Some thought it was crushed
eggshells; others thought it was a special fish paste, which they would
leave to ripen in the earth for one hundred years. No wonder it would be
centuries before Europeans would even begin to unravel the great
mystery of porcelain. It took the Chinese themselves thousands of years
to discover the secret of porcelain - the product of a search for
perfection which began more than six millennia ago.
Download our android app!
