When the Portuguese began trading with China in the early 1500s, porcelain was one of the luxury goods they carried home in their ships. Only the Chinese knew how to make this delicate, often translucent, material that rings when you tap it. Demand for porcelain made expressly for foreigners spread as far afield as the Netherlands, Germany, Persia, the Ottoman empire Japan and the young United States. The Chinese manufacturers drew on traditional shapes, but quickly began to branch out, making Western tureens in the form of pigs, cockerels, blue-eyed horned oxheads and bug-eyed crouching crabs, as well as sauceboats shaped as whole multicoloured fish. It was a world apart from the traditional Chinese blue-and-white. The earliest commissions, often with coats of arms, are called the "first orders".
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