Porcelain styles, and there are several modern industrial manufacturers. These exported Chinese porcelains were held in such great esteem in Europe that in English "china" became a commonly–used synonym for the Italian term "porcelain". The first mention of porcelain in Europe is in "Il Milione" by Marco Polo in XII sec. Apart from copying Chinese porcelain in "faience" (tin glazed earthenware), the soft-paste Medici porcelain in 16th-century Florence was the first real European attempt to reproduce it, with little success. Early in the 16th century, Portuguese traders returned home with samples of kaolin, which they discovered in China to be essential
Porcelain coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness), and resonant". However, the term "porcelain" lacks a universal definition and has "been applied in an unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds which have only certain surface-qualities in common". Traditionally, East Asia only classifies pottery into low-fired wares (earthenware) and high-fired wares (often translated as porcelain), without the European concept of stoneware, which is high-fired but not generally white or translucent. Terms such as "proto-porcelain", "porcellaneous" or "near-porcelain" may be used in cases where the ceramic body approaches whiteness and translucency. A high proportion of modern porcelain is made of the variant