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
Coalport porcelain a maroon glaze and brought the Nantgarw technical recipes to Rose at Coalport. Coalport and Coalbrookdale specialised in dinner services. The familiar "Indian tree" pattern, which is based in fact on Chinese rather than Indian prototypes, was originated at Coalport; variants have been produced by virtually all the British manufacturers of table wares and continue to be available today. Models that originated at Meissen and Sèvres were copied at Coalbrookdale in the mid-19th century, sometimes with misleading marks, "a practice which ought to have been avoided", William Chaffers observed. Sprigged floral encrusted decoration was also typical of Coalport wares, such