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
Biscuit porcelain by giving them a temporary coating of wax or something similar to keep the glaze off; this is a fairly common feature of Longquan celadon (which is porcelain in Chinese terms), and also found in Ming dragons. Some Chinese pieces are described as "porcelain with polychrome enamels on the biscuit" - that is, using the normal "overglaze" technique on biscuit, but with no actual glaze, often a revivalist style evoking earlier sancai wares (which were not in porcelain). The laborious and mostly 19th-century pâte-sur-pâte technique often uses biscuit for at least one of the colours. Biscuit porcelain Biscuit porcelain, bisque