Guides › Pottery

Identifying porcelain — Chinese and European

True hard-paste, soft-paste, and reading a teabowl sherd.

Porcelain is white through the body, translucent where thin, and glassy-hard. Chinese hard-paste reached Europe by the shipload — blue-and-white export ware above all — and European factories imitated with soft-paste (slightly creamy, less glassy break) before mastering true porcelain in the 18th century.

On a sherd: check the foot ring (Chinese wares often show a neatly cut ring with tiny grit adhesions), glaze tone (Chinese glazes often faintly blue-green where pooled), and painting under versus over the glaze. Reign marks on Chinese bases are copied so routinely that a mark alone dates nothing.

Describe body, glaze, decoration, and translucency; photograph painted motifs and any base mark. Be candid that porcelain identification is connoisseurship — 'Chinese export, probably 18th century' with good photos invites the right correction if you're wrong.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on pottery

Identifying pottery and ceramics — Fabric, surface, and how it was formed.

Identifying terracotta figurines — Mould lines and vent holes.

Identifying amphorae and transport pottery — Shape equals cargo.

Identifying tiles and brick — Fabric, stamp, and format.

Identifying Roman samian ware — Glossy red tableware with moulded scenes and potters' stamps.

Identifying Roman coarse wares — The kitchen pottery of the empire — greywares, mortaria, and flagons.

Home · Get the app · Guides · Museums · Privacy · Terms