Soft-paste porcelain in the context of "Kaolin"

The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typically excludes architecture. Ceramic art, metalwork, furniture, jewellery, fashion, various forms of the textile arts and glassware are major groupings.

Applied arts largely overlap with the decorative arts, and in modern parlance they are both often placed under the umbrella category of design. The decorative arts are often categorized in distinction to the "fine arts", namely painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale sculpture, which generally produce objects solely for their aesthetic quality and capacity to stimulate the intellect.

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.

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.

Le Nove porcelain was made in the 18th century in the town now called Nove, near Bassano, then in the Republic of Venice's mainland territories, the terrafirma. It was made at a factory owned by Pasquale Antonibon, who was already making fine maiolica in fashionable styles, which continued to be made alongside the porcelain. Production of porcelain began in 1762 and ended when Antonibon died in 1773. But it resumed in 1781, when Francisco Parolin (or Parolini) leased the factory for twenty years in a partnership with the Antonibons, known as the "Parolin period". This lasted until 1802. Production of porcelain continued intermittently until 1835.

Initially soft-paste porcelain was made, but some hard-paste porcelain from about 1765, though soft-paste pieces are still assigned dates after this. Some of the factory's products are also classified as terraglia, the Italian version of Staffordshire creamware, a fine earthenware. The production was generally similar to that of the Cozzi porcelain factory in Venice itself, and used the same clays, so it can be difficult to distinguish between the two.

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.

A cup is a small container used to hold liquids for drinking, typically with a flattened hemispherical shape and an open "mouth", and often with a capacity of about 6–16 US fluid ounces (177–473 ml). Cups may be made of pottery (including porcelain), glass, metal, wood, stone, polystyrene, plastic, lacquerware, or other materials. Normally, a cup is brought in contact with the mouth for drinking, distinguishing it from other tableware and drinkware forms such as jugs; however, a straw and/or lid may also be used. They also often have handles, though many do not, including beakers which have no handle or stem, or small bowl shapes which are very common in Asia.

There are many specific terms for different types of cups in different cultures, many depending on the type of drink they are mostly used for, and the material they are made of; in particular, cups made of glass are mostly called a "glass" in contemporary English. Cups of different styles may be used for different types of liquids or other foodstuffs (e.g, teacups and measuring cups), in different situations (e.g, at water stations or in ceremonies and rituals), or for decoration.

Creamware is a cream-coloured refined earthenware with a lead glaze over a pale body, known in France as faïence fine, in the Netherlands as Engels porselein, and in Italy as terraglia inglese. It was created about 1750 by the potters of Staffordshire, England, who refined the materials and techniques of salt-glazed earthenware towards a finer, thinner, whiter body with a brilliant glassy lead glaze, which proved so ideal for domestic ware that it supplanted white salt-glaze wares by about 1780. It was popular until the 1840s.

Variations of creamware were known as "tortoiseshell ware" or "Whieldon ware" were developed by the master potter Thomas Whieldon with coloured stains under the glaze. It served as an inexpensive substitute for the soft-paste porcelains being developed by contemporary English manufactories, initially in competition with Chinese export porcelains. It was often made in the same fashionable and refined styles as porcelain.