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 ceramics terms used to classify Chinese porcelain by the dominant element in its colour palette. Famille verte (康熙五彩, "Kangxi wucai", also 素三彩, "Susancai"), adopted in the Kangxi period (1662–1722), uses green and iron red with other overglaze colours. It developed from the "Wucai" (五彩, "Five colours") style. Famille jaune is a variation using famille verte enamels on a yellow ground. Famille noire (Chinese: 黑地素三彩, "Modi susancai") uses a black ground (although some clobbered wares had the black added in the 19th century). Famille rose (known in Chinese as "Fencai" (粉彩) or "Ruancai" (軟彩, simplified 软彩), meaning 'soft colours', and later as