As for the other constituent of porcelain, the petuntse or china-stone,
we have called it a disintegrated granite, and this is the condition in
which it is usually excavated. It corresponds to the French _cailloux_,
the stony or gravelly material as opposed to the clay. In French works
it is not generally distinguished from felspar, and indeed some
varieties of petuntse may contain little else. However, if pure felspar
is used, the second constituent in granite or in petuntse, I mean
quartz, will have to be added to our porcelain paste in the form of sand
or powdered flint. The third constituent of the china-stone, the mica,
is usually neglected: in many cases the mother rock contains but little,
and what there is is eliminated in the washing. Mica is more fusible
than felspar; the white variety, muscovite, is practically free from
iron, and only from granite rocks containing this variety can petuntse
suitable for the manufacture of porcelain be obtained. The importance of
mica as an element of the Chinese petuntse has only recently been
recognised (Vogt, _Comptes Rendus_, 1890, p. 43). As much as 40 per
cent. of muscovite has been found in samples brought from China. The
pegmatite of the Limoges district, on the other hand, contains only 30
per cent. of this white mica, and of this only a small portion passes
into the paste. We have here, perhaps, the principal cause of the
greater hardness and the higher softening-point of European compared
with Oriental porcelain.
We shall see later on that this softer Chinese paste has many
advantages, especially in its relation to the glaze and the enamels, but
for the present we will continue to take the more ‘severe’ European
porcelain as our type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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