Soft-paste porcelain its soft-paste and hard-paste varieties is fraught with misconceptions", and various categories based on the analysis of the ingredients have been proposed instead. Some writers have proposed a "catch-all" category of "hybrid" porcelain, to include bone china and various "variant" bodies made at various times. At least in the past, some sources dealing with modern industrial chemistry and pottery production have made a completely different distinction between "hard porcelain" and "soft porcelain", by which all forms of pottery porcelain, including East Asian wares, are "soft porcelain". Chinese porcelain, which arrived in Europe before the 14th century, was much admired and
Chinese porcelain in European painting Chinese porcelain in European painting Chinese porcelain in European painting is known from the 16th century, following the importation of Chinese porcelain wares into Europe. In Italy, the first known depiction of Chinese porcelain bowls is from "The Feast of the Gods" by Giovanni Bellini (1514). The style of the bowls is that of the Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain type, maybe examples of which are known to have been exported in Persia, Syria and Egypt. The painting by Bellini was a request by Duke Alfonso I d'Este, who was known for his interest in Chinese porcelain. It seems