Porcelain, the ancient Chinese technology, is quietly reshaping the modern world
Everything Rhymes with Porcelain
The author's pricey induction cooktop required a Dekton surface that cost five times as much as tempered glass, and the answer to what Dekton is turns out to be porcelain. Tracing porcelain from kaolin clay in northern China through the Meissen breakthrough to a $200 million high-tech slab, the essay argues that materials science is transforming the physical world as profoundly as AI is transforming the digital one.
Paradoxically, porcelain is both one of humankind's oldest high technologies and one of its newest.