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
Jingdezhen porcelain were appointed by the provincial administration up until 1726, when Beijing appointed Nian Xiyao. Wares of this interim period are often called "Transitional", and include the Tianqi porcelain mostly made for the Japanese market. The effect on the Jingdezhen potters was "liberating", as the range of subject matter in decoration greatly expanded. Printed books had become much more widely available, and were used, directly or indirectly, as sources for scenes on porcelain. Conveniently for the historian, many pieces began to be dated. Towards the end of the period the first "famille rose" porcelains appeared; the various colour "families" were to