Porcelain in the context of "Kiln"

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.

Bocage (UK: /bəˈkɑːʒ/, US: /ˈboʊkɑːʒ/ BOH-kahzh) is a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture characteristic of parts of northern France, southern England, Ireland, the Netherlands, northern Spain and northern Germany, in regions where pastoral farming is the dominant land use.

Bocage may also refer to a small forest, a decorative element of leaves, or a type of rubble-work, comparable with the English use of "rustic" in relation to garden ornamentation. In the decorative arts, especially porcelain, it refers to a leafy screen spreading above and behind figures. Though found on continental figures, it is something of an English speciality, beginning in the mid-18th century, especially in Chelsea porcelain, and later spreading to more downmarket Staffordshire pottery figures.

A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, and brick.

The earliest ceramics made by humans were fired clay bricks used for building house walls and other structures. Other pottery objects such as pots, vessels, vases and figurines were made from clay, either by itself or mixed with other materials like silica, hardened by sintering in fire. Later, ceramics were glazed and fired to create smooth, colored surfaces, decreasing porosity through the use of glassy, amorphous ceramic coatings on top of the crystalline ceramic substrates. Ceramics now include domestic, industrial, and building products, as well as a wide range of materials developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering, such as semiconductors.

Tableware items are the dishware and utensils used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. The term includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, serving utensils, and other items used for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates, and not infrequently without use of cutlery. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.

Cutlery is more usually known as silverware or flatware in the United States, where cutlery usually means knives and related cutting instruments; elsewhere cutlery includes all the forks, spoons and other silverware items. Outside the US, flatware is a term for "open-shaped" dishware items such as plates, dishes and bowls (as opposed to "closed" shapes like jugs and vases). Dinnerware is another term used to refer to tableware, and crockery refers to ceramic tableware, today often porcelain or bone china. Sets of dishes are referred to as a table service, dinner service or service set. Table settings or place settings are the dishes, cutlery and glassware used for formal and informal dining. In Ireland, tableware is often referred to as delph, the word being an English language phonetic spelling of the word Delft, the town from which so much delftware came. Silver service or butler service are methods for a butler or waiter to serve a meal.

A figurine (a diminutive form of the word figure) or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with clay, metal, wood, glass, and today plastic or resin the most significant. Ceramic figurines not made of porcelain are called terracottas in historical contexts.

Figures with movable parts, allowing limbs to be posed, are more likely to be called dolls, mannequins, or action figures; or robots or automata, if they can move on their own. Figurines and miniatures are sometimes used in board games, such as chess, and tabletop role playing games.

Faience or faïence (/faɪˈɑːns, feɪˈ-, -ˈɒ̃s/; French: [fajɑ̃s] ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result, after millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain styles.

English generally uses various other terms for well-known sub-types of faience. Italian tin-glazed earthenware, at least the early forms, is called maiolica in English, Dutch wares are called Delftware, and their English equivalents English delftware, leaving "faience" as the normal term in English for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese wares and those of other countries not mentioned (it is also the usual French term, and fayence in German). The name faience is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, Italy, where a painted majolica ware on a clean, opaque pure-white ground, was produced for export as early as the fifteenth century.

Capodimonte porcelain (sometimes "Capo di Monte") is porcelain created by the Capodimonte porcelain manufactory (Real Fabbrica di Capodimonte), which operated in Naples, Italy, between 1743 and 1759. Capodimonte is the most significant factory for early Italian porcelain, the Doccia porcelain of Florence being the other main Italian factory. Capodimonte is most famous for its moulded figurines.

The porcelain of Capodimonte, and later Naples, was a "superb" translucent soft-paste, "more beautiful" but much harder to fire than the German hard-pastes, or "a particularly clear, warm, white, covered with a mildly lustrous glaze". The Capodimonte mark was a fleur-de-lys in blue, or impressed in relief inside a circle.

The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 km (4,000 mi) on land, it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds. The name "Silk Road" was coined in the late 19th century, but some 20th- and 21st-century historians instead prefer the term Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe. In fact, some scholars criticise or even dismiss the idea of silk roads and call for a new definition or alternate term. According to them, the literature using this term has "privileged the sedentary and literate empires at either end of Eurasia" thereby ignoring the contributions of steppe nomads. In addition, the classic definition sidelines civilisations like India and Iran.

The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were primarily produced in China. The network began with the expansion of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) into Central Asia around 114 BCE, through the missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian, which brought the region under unified control. The Chinese took great interest in the security of their trade products, and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route. The Parthian Empire provided a vital bridge connecting the network to the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the rise of the Roman Empire in the west further established the western terminus of the interconnected trade system. By the first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece. Other lucrative commodities from the East included tea, dyes, perfumes, and porcelain; among Western exports were horses, camels, honey, wine, and gold. Aside from generating substantial wealth for emerging mercantile classes, the proliferation of goods such as paper and gunpowder greatly affected the trajectory of political history in several theatres in Eurasia and beyond.

Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. In the arts, many things are commonly personified, including: places, especially cities, countries, and continents; elements of the natural world, such as trees, the four seasons, the "four elements", the four cardinal winds, and the five senses; moral abstractions, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins; the nine Muses; and death.

In many polytheistic early religions, deities had a strong element of personification, suggested by descriptions such as "god of". In ancient Greek religion, and the related ancient Roman religion, this was perhaps especially strong, in particular among the minor deities. Many such deities, such as the tyches or tutelary deities for major cities, survived the arrival of Christianity, now as symbolic personifications stripped of religious significance. An exception was the winged goddess of victory, Victoria/Nike, who developed into the visualisation of the Christian angel.

A tithe (/taɪð/; from Old English: teogoþa "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Modern tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques or via online giving, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural produce. Church tax linked to the tax system are used in many countries to support their national church. Donations to the church beyond what is owed in the tithe, or by those attending a congregation who are not members or adherents, are known as offerings, and often are designated for specific purposes such as a building program, debt retirement, or mission work.

Many Christian denominations hold Jesus taught that tithing must be done in conjunction with a deep concern for "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (cf. Matthew 23:23). Tithing was taught at early Christian church councils, including the Council of Tours in 567, as well as the Third Council of Mâcon in 585. Tithing remains an important doctrine in many Christian denominations, such as the Congregational churches, Methodist Churches and Seventh-day Adventist Church. Some Christian Churches, such as those in the Methodist tradition, teach the concept of Storehouse Tithing, which emphasizes that tithes must be prioritized and given to the local church, before offerings can be made to apostolates or charities.