Porcelain, Faience, Creamware or Stoneware? How to Tell the Difference

The difference between porcelain and faience lies in the body, the fired material beneath the glaze. Porcelain is fired so hard that it becomes white, dense and translucent where thin. Faience is a porous earthenware covered with a white, opaque tin glaze, and where the glaze has chipped a red or yellowish body shows. Creamware is a pale, thin earthenware under a clear glaze, and stoneware is dense and hard but lets no light through.

Facts

The body and the heat

All ceramics are fired clay, but which clay it is and how hot it is fired determines what it becomes. Earthenware is fired at about 900–1,150 °C and stays porous: it absorbs water unless it is glazed. Stoneware is fired at about 1,150–1,300 °C, and then the body vitrifies, partly fusing together and becoming dense. Porcelain, made of kaolin, feldspar and quartz, is fired at about 1,300–1,450 °C and becomes glassy, white and translucent.

The ceramics diagram further down lets you heat the kiln and see how the body changes. The terms are also explained in the glossary, and the page on ceramics has the whole history from Delft to today’s studio pottery.

Faience: earthenware in white dress

Faience is earthenware dipped in a white glaze containing tin oxide, which covers the coloured body and gives a surface to paint on. The technique came by way of Spain and Italy, where it is called maiolica, to the Netherlands, where in the 17th century Delft made blue-and-white imitations of Chinese porcelain. In Sweden Rörstrand began making faience in 1726, and Marieberg on Kungsholmen competed from 1758 with, among other things, tureens shaped like cabbages and birds, such as Marieberg’s faience.

Faience is recognised by its edges. The glaze is thick and soft and chips easily where the vessel has been knocked, and a red or yellowish body shows beneath. Under dishes and plates there are often small scars, stilt marks, from the supports in the kiln. Swedish faience, like the tureen from Rörstrand, is often marked with the factory, the date and the painter’s sign; see the guide to Rörstrand marks.

Creamware: the everyday ware of industry

Creamware is a pale, hard and thin earthenware with a clear glaze, developed in Staffordshire in the 18th century. Josiah Wedgwood was allowed to call his Queen’s Ware after an order from Queen Charlotte in 1765, and it became cheap enough for ordinary tables. In the 19th century factories all over Europe made creamware on the English model, in Sweden among others Rörstrand and Gustavsberg, and copperplate-printed patterns such as the Willow pattern filled the dinner-service cupboards.

Creamware is lighter than porcelain and lets no light through. The glaze often crazes into a fine network of cracks, and where it has cracked the body can absorb moisture and become discoloured. In Sweden creamware was sometimes called flintporslin, but it is not porcelain, and marks with that word should not be read that way.

Stoneware: dense, hard and opaque

Stoneware is fired so hard that it becomes watertight even without a glaze. It is usually grey, brown or red, heavy and rings clearly. Salt-glazed jugs from the Rhineland belong here, as does Böttger’s red stoneware, which was the first step towards the porcelain of Meissen, and Wedgwood’s jasperware, a coloured stoneware with white reliefs. In the 20th century stoneware became the material of the studio potters.

Stoneware can be as hard as porcelain, but it is not translucent. A break is dense and grainy rather than glassy, and the unglazed foot rim often shows a coloured fragment.

Glaze and decoration

The decoration gives more clues. Underglaze decoration, such as cobalt blue, is painted on the unfired or biscuit-fired body and protected by the glaze, so that it is never worn away; the Blue Fluted pattern (Musselmalet) and blue-and-white faience are examples. Overglaze decoration and gilding are fired on afterwards at a lower temperature and wear more easily, especially in the middle and at the rims of plates.

Printed decoration, transferred from engraved copper plates with paper, became common from the 1750s and dominated the creamware of the 19th century. It is recognised by fine dots and lines that are identical on every piece, whereas hand-painted decoration varies from piece to piece. Later came decals, ready-printed pictures laid on the glaze. Wedgwood, whose mark shows how English factories stamped their wares, was early with both creamware and printed decoration. For Swedish ware the guide to Gustavsberg marks helps.

Porcelain and five simple tests

True, hard-paste porcelain for a long time came only from China and Japan, as East India Company porcelain. In Europe it was first achieved at Meissen, where the factory was founded in 1710 and soon made services such as the Swan Service. Sèvres first made soft-paste porcelain, fired at a lower temperature, and in England bone china, made with bone ash, was developed around 1800.

Five tests will take you a long way. Hold the object against a lamp: porcelain lets light through where it is thin, the others do not. Look at the foot rim: porcelain is white and dense where the glaze is missing, earthenware is coloured or chalky. Look at the edges: thick white glaze that has chipped suggests faience. Feel the weight: creamware is light, stoneware heavy. Tap gently with a fingernail: porcelain and stoneware ring clearly, earthenware sounds dull. The mark under the base then confirms the factory; see the guide to porcelain marks. The guide to crystal and glass asks the same questions about material and manufacture.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A dish has a thick white glaze that has chipped at the rim, and a reddish body shows beneath. What is it probably made of?