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Appearances Over Time

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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

And there's a couple of ways you can actually form that tile.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

If it's up to like four feet by four feet, you basically have a special mold.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

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.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

That's right.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

You mentioned how valuable it can be.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

The world auction record for Chinese porcelain was set about, I don't know, in 2014, when the Mayan Tang chicken cup was sold for $36 million.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

And, you know, why is anything valuable?

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

It's because there's not many of them.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

It was crafted between 1465 and 87, when

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

Porcelain was just peaking at its quality, but they were producing the lowest amount.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

So it was just super rare.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

So that's why it fetched $36 million.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

Yeah, for sure.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

I mean, you said bone porcelain.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

If you've ever heard bone china, that was something the English did, and that's actual bone.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

I think when they were sort of first searching out how to make this stuff, before they cracked the code, they would use like eggshell and stuff like that to no avail.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

And finally, they landed on actual human bone ground down.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

Obviously, a very strong thing, bone ash would be.

Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Porcelain

Not from humans, apparently from farm animals.