The Dilemma: Porcelain or Pottery

By: Judy McAllister

The addition of the Porcelain and Pottery lanes on Ruby Lane has caused some of us shop owners to scratch our heads on how to categorize our ceramic or clay based items. We want to follow the guidelines given us, but we also do not want to lose sales from items that are lost in a search. For instance, flow blue china may be porcelain, semi-porcelain, or stoneware and it is especially difficult to differentiate soft-paste porcelain from pottery. I don’t think I am the only shop owner with this dilemma for I do not see many items moved from Antiques and Porcelain to Pottery. This may also pose confusion to shoppers. This blog entry is intended to quote various sources to help inform both the shop owners and the shoppers on Ruby Lane.

Know Your Antiques by Ralph and Terry Kovel give a simple way of differentiating porcelain from pottery. Quoting from the book: “Pottery is opaque. You can’t see through it. Porcelain is translucent. When a porcelain dish is held in front of a strong light, it is possible to see the light through the dish. If a piece of pottery is held in one hand and porcelain in the other, the piece of porcelain will be colder to the touch. If a dish is broken, a porcelain dish will chip with small shell like breaks, while pottery cracks on a line. Pottery is softer, and easier to break, and it will stain more easily because it is more porous. Porcelain is thinner, lighter, more durable, and more expensive.”

Below, I have listed the definitions of Porcelain and Pottery given by Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, and the standards put forth by Ruby Lane. These are direct quotes:
PORCELAIN Definitions

WIKIPEDIA
Type of porcelain: Hard paste, Soft paste, Bone China

1. Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 °C (2,192 °F) and 1,400 °C (2,552 °F). The toughness, strength, and translucence of porcelain arise mainly from the formation of glass and the mineral mullite within the fired body at these high temperatures. Porcelain is sometimes referred to as china. This is because until the 17th century, China was the sole producer of porcelain.

2. For the purposes of trade, the Combined Nomenclature of the European Communities defines porcelain as being "completely vitrified, hard, impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness) and resonant. " However, the term porcelain lacks a universal definition and has, "been applied in a very unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds which have only certain surface-qualities in common." (Burton 1906).

MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY

1. Hard-Paste Porcelain is a hard, fine-grained, sonorous, nonporous, and usually translucent and white ceramic ware that consists essentially of kaolin, quartz, and a feldspathic rock and is fired at a high temperature —called also hard-paste porcelain true porcelain

2. Soft-Paste Porcelain is a translucent ceramic ware fired at a low temperature that was produced in Europe during the 16th through 18th centuries in imitation of hard-paste porcelain.

RUBY LANE GUIDELINES

1. Items should consist primarily of hard or soft paste porcelain, bone china, or parian.

2. Opaque earthenware items such as those made of basalt, delftware, creamware, ironstone, jasper ware, majolica, pearlware, queensware or stoneware; these should be listed in the Pottery Lane.
POTTERY Definitions

WIKIPEDIA
Pottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. It also refers to a group of materials that includes earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries.

MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY
Clayware: earthenware as distinguished from porcelain and stoneware and from brick and tile.

RUBY LANE GUIDELINES
Pottery items should consist primarily of opaque earthenware, or pottery. Examples of pottery: basalt, delftware, creamware, ironstone, jasper ware, majolica, pearlware, queensware, stoneware.

Article Source: https://www.collectibles-articles.com

Judy McAllister
Judy’s Lovelies
www.rubylane.com/shops/tomjudy

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