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
Van Tilburg Collection (1465-1487), Hongzhi (1488-1505), Zhengde (1506-1521), Jiajing (1522-1566) and Wanli (1573-1619) wares are found in the Collection. Noteworthy Kangxi (1662-1722) and Qianlong (1736-1795) pieces are the large blue-and-white porcelain chargers, the underglaze red pots and blue-and-white ritual stand with two side vases. There are numerous polychrome Kangxi 'Famille verte' and Qianlong 'Famille rose' plates in the collection. The collection holds a pair of 'Famille noire' pots which belonged to the Kangxi Emperor. There are also a number of Imperial Japanese pieces in the collection, among them a blue-and-white Arita gendi with Arabian ormulo mouldings, an early 19th-century blue-and-white Arita charger decorated