Meissen porcelain in the context of "Augustus II the Strong"

Chelsea porcelain is the porcelain made by the Chelsea porcelain manufactory, the first important porcelain manufactory in England, established around 1743–45, and operating independently until 1770, when it was merged with Derby porcelain. It made soft-paste porcelain throughout its history, though there were several changes in the "body" material and glaze used. Its wares were aimed at a luxury market, and its site in Chelsea, London, was close to the fashionable Ranelagh Gardens pleasure ground, opened in 1742.

The first known wares are the "goat and bee" cream jugs with seated goats at the base, some examples of which are incised with "Chelsea", "1745" and a triangle. The entrepreneurial director, at least from 1750, was Nicholas Sprimont, a Huguenot silversmith in Soho, but few private documents survive to aid a picture of the factory's history. Early tablewares, being produced in profusion by 1750, depend on Meissen porcelain models and on silverware prototypes, such as salt cellars in the form of realistic shells.

Bone china is a type of vitreous, translucent pottery, the raw materials for which include bone ash, feldspathic material and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from calcined animal bone or calcium phosphate. Bone china is amongst the strongest of whiteware ceramics, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of whiteware. Like stoneware, it is vitrified, but is translucent due to differing mineral properties.

In the mid-18th century, English potters had not succeeded in making hard-paste porcelain (as made in East Asia and Meissen porcelain), but found bone ash a useful addition to their soft-paste porcelain mixtures. This became standard at the Bow porcelain factory in London (operating from around 1747), and spread to some other English factories. The modern product was developed by the Staffordshire potter Josiah Spode in the early 1790s. Spode included kaolin, so his formula, sometimes called "Staffordshire bone-porcelain", was effectively hard-paste, but stronger, and versions were adopted by all the major English factories by around 1815.

Early European personifications of America, meaning the Americas, typically come from sets of the four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. These were all that were then known in Europe. The addition of America made these an even more attractive group to represent visually, as sets of four could be placed around all sorts of four-sided objects, or in pairs along the facade of a building with a central doorway.

A set of loose conventions quickly arose as to the iconography of the personifications. They were normally female, with Europe queenly and grandly dressed, and clearly the leader of the group. Asia is fully and richly dressed but in an exotic style, with Africa and America at most half-dressed, and given exotic props. One of the earliest and most persistent attributes for America was the parrot; these reached Europe by the early 16th century and were highly valued. The feather crown headdress, with the feathers standing up vertically, reflected the actual headgear of some American peoples. This personification was staged at Whitehall Palace in December 1613 by a dancer in The Somerset Masque wearing "a skin coat the colour of the juice of mulberries, on her head large round brims of many coloured feathers, and in the midst of it a small crown". A cornucopia, representing the new edible plants from the Americas, was a very common feature (although the familiar apple often seems the most prominent). America is often accompanied by an improbably placid caiman or alligator, reasonably comparable to Old World crocodiles, though the earliest images may show an exotic armadillo.

Meissen (German: Meißen [ˈmaɪsn̩] ; Upper Sorbian: Mišno; Latin: Misnia, Misenacode: lat promoted to code: la ) is a town of approximately 30,000 inhabitants, situated about 25 km (16 mi) north‑west of Dresden and 75 km (47 mi) west of Bautzen, on both banks of the River Elbe in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is renowned as the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrechtsburg castle, the Gothic Meissen Cathedral, and the Meissen Church of Our Lady [de]. The town of Meissen, designated as a Große Kreisstadt, serves as the administrative seat of the Meissen district.

In Germany, the name Meissen is the legally registered trademark of the State Porcelain Manufactory (Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH), while Meißen refers specifically to the city and municipality.

Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, refers to the systematic and unauthorized acquisition of sensitive business information. This practice typically targets trade secrets, proprietary operational data, and intellectual property belonging to competitors or other organizations. The information is gathered with the intent to gain competitive advantage, facilitate business decision-making, or for commercial sale to interested parties. Industrial espionage is conducted by various actors, including current or former employees, contractors, corporate competitors, foreign governments, and criminal organizations, and is universally recognized as both illegal and unethical.

While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations.

Cozzi porcelain is porcelain made by the Cozzi factory in Venice, which operated between 1764 and 1812. Production included sculptural figurines, mostly left in plain glazed white, and tableware, mostly painted with floral designs or with figures in landscapes and buildings, in "bright but rough" colours. They were rather derivative, drawing from Meissen porcelain in particular in the early years.

The Cozzi factory was the last but most successful of the three factories which made Venetian porcelain actually in the city of Venice in the 18th century. Initially the Cozzi factory made soft-paste porcelain, but by the 1770s they were making hard-paste porcelain, with kaolin from near Vicenza, giving a "thin hard grey paste with a shiny wet-looking surface". Their body is sometimes classified as "hybrid hard-paste porcelain" as although it contains kaolin it was apparently fired at lower temperatures than other hard-pastes.

Johann Joachim Kändler (June 15, 1706 – May 18, 1775) was a German sculptor who became the most important modeller of Meissen porcelain, and perhaps of all European porcelain. He worked at Meissen from 1731 until his death in 1775.

Meissen pieces of all sorts were normally made with moulds mostly designed by Kändler, who also supervised the production of the moulds and checked the quality of the end products. He was often not involved with painting the pieces, a task that could vary among various examples.

The Sächsische Porzellan-Manufaktur Dresden GmbH (Saxon Porcelain Manufactory in Dresden Ltd), generally known in English as Dresden Porcelain (though that may also mean the much older and better-known Meissen porcelain), was a German company for the production of decorative and luxury porcelain. Founded in 1872, it was located in Potschappel, a suburb of the town of Freital in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district about 8 km (5 mi) southwest of Dresden, the capital of Saxony.

The company has had a chequered history of ownership including its period as a nationalised VEB (People's Owned Enterprise) in former East Germany. Russian businessman Armenak S. Agababyan owned 50% from 2005 to 2008 when he became sole owner, and the company had been exporting 80% of its products. The main markets were the Russian, Asian and Arab regions. In January 2020, Agababyan announced that  production would cease indefinitely, with two employees being retained to continue sales of stock from the showroom in Carl-Thieme-Straße and the shop in Dresden until the end of 2020 when the company was finally dissolved.