Chuck

A lot of times floor tile can be porcelain.

But this all originated in China about 2,000 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, solid pieces of stuff.

And that was just rudimentary porcelain.

Later in the Yuan Dynasty, it was about 700, 800 years later –

is when they really developed the porcelain as we know it, the porcelain that Marco Polo found and brought back to Europe, and they just went wild for this stuff.

Yeah, a German alchemist, Johann Friedrich Brücher.

And he figured it out.

This was in, I guess, the 18th century.

And by the latter half of the 18th century, in the 1770s, they found that kaolin clay in Cornwall, England.

And so the Brits were like, we can start making this stuff finally.

We've got the good stuff right here in Cornwall.

Yeah, and I think you're right.

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've got to glaze the 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 impermeable to liquids.

Me too.

But it really has nothing to do with it.