Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

What exactly is this durable ceramic anyway?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and it's just us. But it's short Stuff and Chuck.
This is the last episode of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's right, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
That's all I had to say about that.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
All right, Well, let's talk porcelain, because porcelain isn't something
I really knew much about until I.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Did this research.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
And porcelain, as it turns out, you might know this
you might not, is a type of ceramic. It's a
subset of ceramics. What they are both made of clay,
and they're both kiln fired, but porcelain clay has a
much higher density and it's fired longer and at higher temperatures,
and fussy, is much more durable, has very high performance characteristics,

(00:51):
and it's you know, porcelain is that super hard mixing
bowl that you got from your grandmother that like you
can't break, you can break them, but just super hardy,
super dense, non porous clay like material.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, I guess I haven't had much experience with porcelain
because I always thought of it as very delicate and
highly breakable, but apparently that's not true. And once I
thought about it a little bit. It's like, actually, I
have lifetime experience with porcelain in the form of a toilet,
but I hadn't really thought about that.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, toilets. Yeah, they don't break.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Try it, you can't do it. So there's three things
that show up in any kind of porcelain, and it's
all natural. That's one of the big attractions of porcelain too.
It's clay, quartz, and feldspar, which is a kind of
rocket that can form from all sorts of different stuff.
And there's all sorts of other stuff you can throw in.
But depending on the kind of porcelain that you come

(01:50):
up with, it's basically dependent on the materials you use,
the raw materials, and then how high a temperature and
how long you fire it for in the kiln. Those
are the big variables that produce different kinds of porcelain.
But probably the most common material that's used is called kalin,
which is a kind of clay that's almost white. And
this is like the big money porcelain clay.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, and that's usually going to be like that mixing
bowl like tableware is usually that kalin, very very fine
particle size. It's super durable, like we were talking about,
and not permeable by any liquid.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Just try it again.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
And you know, when we're talking firing temperatures, we'll get
to a couple of different kinds of porcelain, but it
can go up to twenty three hundred degrees fahrenheit about
twelve sixty celsius. And it kind of just depends on
the what you're making it for, like is it a
toilet or is it a mixing bowl or is it
fine China.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
And one other thing about porcelain too that I hadn't
realized is that some kinds of it are translucent. And
I was like, wait, that means kind of see through,
and I looked up pictures of it, and yes, you
can hold porcelain up to a light, like in your hand,
and you can see the silhouette of your hand on
the other side of it.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Did you know that, Yeah, because I've worked with porcelain
tile where you can do that a lot of time.
Flortyle can be porcelain. But this all originated in China
about two thousand years ago during the Tang dynasty. But
it wasn't like the porcelain we know. It was basically like, hey,
we put out our fire, and they discovered this really hard, unbroken,

(03:23):
solid pieces of stuff, and that was just rudimentary porcelain.
Later in the Yuan dynasty, it's about seven hundred, eight
hundred years later, is when they really developed the porcelains.
We know it the porcelain that Marco Polo found and
brought back to Europe, and they were just went wild
for this stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
They did, and the market for porcelain opened up pretty
quickly because trade routes were open thanks to Marco Polo.
But the Europeans could not figure out how their Chinese
friends were making this stuff. So all of the porcelain
coming into Europe was foreign mate made in China. And
that's why a lot of porcelain tablewhear is called China

(04:05):
because it was kind of like the like Champagne is
the sparkling wine. China was to porcelain right, and it
took them quite a couple hundred years, I think before
they finally cracked the code. And it was an alchemist
who figured out how to make porcelain by basically reverse
engineering a piece that he had from China.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, a German alchemist, Johann Friedrich Brutgue, and he figured
it out. This was in I guess the eighteenth century
and by the latter half of the eighteenth century. In
the seventeen seventies they found that Cowlin clay in Cornwall, England,
and so the Brits were like, we can start making
this stuff. Finally we've got we got the good stuff

(04:48):
right here in Cornwall.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Is it Cowlin like Shaolin?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
I like how you said it, Wow, how'd you say
it Kalin like Kalin or Calin?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
So Yeah, the Britz are like, great, we can put
all this together thanks to Booker and Cornwall and start
making our own porcelain. And I'm not quite sure. I
get the impression that China made it its porcelain one
of two ways, and the way that they mostly made
their porcelain was through hard paste, and that the other

(05:20):
one is soft paste. And it has to do with
the density of the raw materials you're using, and then
how high a temperature you fire it at and for
how long. Like I was talking about before, these are
basically the two types, two main categories of porcelain.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, and I think you're right.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
I think the Europeans use that soft paste a little
more so it's a little more prone to chipping. It's
a little grainier, just not as hearty overall. And then
you got a glaze of stuff after you fire it.
But the glazing I thought, you know, because I didn't
know anything about this stuff, I thought the glazing might
be kind of the final key to make it in
permeable to liquids. Me too, but really has nothing to

(05:59):
do with it. It's all right, impermeable. The glazing is
just decorative.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, it's impermeable because it vitrifies, so like the the
glass glass like materials become glass in it, so it's
like kind of glassy. Really good porcelain is. So I say, Chuck,
we take a little break and come back and talk
some more about porcelain. What do you think. Let's do it, Chuck.

(06:41):
I'd like to share something that I learned in our
Dolls episode that I didn't have a chance to fit in,
but now I do, because it seems like all of
our episodes are now interlocking for some reason. But unglazed
porcelain is called.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Bisc bisk okay, it like b I s q u.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
E, exactly like a tomato, shrimp, lobster, lobster. That's the
money one, sure.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Although a lot of times that stuff's lang astino.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
You know, I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, I mean, if you go to like a really
high price seafood restaurant, it'll be real lobster.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
But that lango is a pretty good sub.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Is that a rock lobster langostina?

Speaker 3 (07:19):
No, it's I think it's just like a little tiny
a little tiny guy like. I mean, it looks like
lobster meat, but it's they're little, you know, it's like
a shrimp size.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Oh okay, okay, yeah, I've seen those before.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
I've never seen a langostina though, now that you mentioned,
I've never looked that up.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
I think I see what the creature looks like.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, i'd like to see that too. I've only seen
it dead. I think that's what grabs everyone's face is
in Beetle Juice and during the Calypso scene.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
All right, Well, I mentioned earlier before they break about
porcelain tile. It's very hearty tile for a flooring or
the wall, but if you're cutting porcelain tile, you're probably
gonna need a tile saw. We talked about wet saals
before they're wet because they are moving at such high
speeds and drawing so much heat that the water cools

(08:09):
off that blade. And there's a couple of ways you
can actually form that tile. If it's up to like
four feet by four feet, you basically have a special mold.
But anything bigger than that and you're compacting it like
just pressing layers and layers of ceramic powder until you
get your desired size.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, with a big old machine. Right.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
So there's a few reasons that people prize porcelain. For one,
it can be really really valuable, as we'll see. But also,
like I said, it's an all natural material, like a
lot of the glazed colors that they use in glazing
are like cobalt, iron oxide copper, like the raw materials
are things like clay and feldspar. It's really easy to clean,

(08:57):
as you know with a toilet, very resistant wolden bacterial growth.
As you know with the toilet, it's water resistant, you know,
like a toilet is. It's good for foot traffic like
a toilet, and it doesn't emit harmful substances like a toilet.
It can also be recycled, but that is a real

(09:17):
niche I guess method or technique, like you can't just
throw porcelain into your single stream recycling can Yeah, you
have to go seek out somebody who recycles it. But
the very fact that it's recyclable gives it kind of
promise for the future as we get better and better
creating a circular economy.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
That's right, you mentioned how valuable it can be. The
world auction record for Chinese porcelain was set about, I
don't know in twenty fourteen when the Mayan Tang chicken
cup was sold for thirty six million dollars. And you
know why is anything valuable is because there's not many
of them. It was crafted between fourteen sixty five and

(10:00):
eighty seven, when porcelain was just peaking at its quality,
but they were producing the lowest amount, so it's just
super rare. So that's why it fetched thirty six million.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yes, And that also points something out about porcelain too,
is if you take good care of it, it's so
durable it can last thousands of years, so at least
a thousand years as far as we know. And there's
like people are into porcelain, like collecting tableware or vases
or things like that, and so there's like a whole
world out there available to you to get into born

(10:31):
bone porcelain, hard paste, soft paste, well basically those kind
And if this thing floated your boat at all, I
think good luck with your new hobby.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah for sure. I mean you said bone porcelain.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
If you've ever heard bone china, that was something that
English did, and that's actual bone. They I think when
they were sort of first searching out how to make
this stuff, they before they cracked the code, they would
use like eggshell and stuff like that to no avail,
and finally they landed on actual human bone ground down
obviously a very strong thing.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Bone ash would be not from humans, apparently from.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Farm animals, and it would really strengthen that stuff. And
bone china you don't have to fire is how you
can fire at lower temps.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
It's just not as strong.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
There is no way that in the history of bone china,
no psycho has made it with human bones.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, that's a good point. Are you enjoying your coffee exactly?

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Oh man, Chuck made me giggle. I mean, short stuff
is out.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Hey wait a minute, can we say goodbye for the year?

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Oh wait, yeah, yes, thank you, Chuck, I say we
do that too.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Goodbye.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
No, in all seriousness, and we want to thank everyone
for another great year. Somehow here in your seventeen we're
enjoying things as much or more than we ever have,
which is hard to believe and pretty wonderful for us.
And you know, big thanks to Dave and Ben and
Jerry of course, and everyone who contributes his writers, you know,

(12:03):
Julia and Anna and.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Olivia, Olivia and Dave and Kyle.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
I think that's everybody right now, right it is. Yeah,
we can thank the grabster for the old days.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Even there you go, he comes up and selects sometimes
to Doney.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
So I just want to say thanks for everyone for
keeping us employed and what's for me, the greatest job
in the world means.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
A lot, agreed. I second, Chuck, and yeah, thank you everybody.
Thanks for another great year, and we'll see you next
year for another great year. And now with short stuff out, Yeah,
short stuff is out.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
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Speaker 3 (12:43):
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Speaker 1 (12:48):
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