Guest post by the Museum of London

Visiting the Past: London’s Original Chinatown






Find out more about Chinatown’s history or discover today’s Chinatown in Soho

Museum of London


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  1. Freddy says:

    The History Of London is facinating stuff. Very interesting.

  2. Goodwheel says:

    One could learn one new thing about London every day of one’s life and never quite be done.

    The porcelain ‘china cup’ depicted in the picture above got me thinking, why do we call chinaware ‘china’ is it in fact connected to the country ‘China’ as the context somewhat suggests.

    Indeed there is a connection as per ‘Yahoo answers’ explains:

    “The Chinese invented porcelain during the song dynasty (9th century), and when examples of Porcelain were brought to Europe by Marco Polo, it was considered so valuable and precious that it was worth its weight in Gold. No one had ever seen something so thin, translucent and delicate. All that was known at the time was stoneware and earthenware (a heavy brown body type of ware).
    The porcelain continued to be imported and was presented as “ware from China” or “China Ware”-since then the name stuck.”

    “For centuries the potters of Europe tried in vain to create “Chinaware”, the best they could do was create their earthenware and apply a tinted tin based glaze to conceal the brown and make it look similar to the white porcelain.
    The secret to the Chinese porcelain happened to be ‘Kaolin’, a white clay derived from granite. This was (and is) the key ingredient in “True porcelain” (also known as hard paste porcelain).”

    Thought this was an interesting piece of general knowledge.

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