Porcelain was first made in China, and it is a measure of the esteem in which the exported Chinese porcelains of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were held in Europe that in English China became a commonly used synonym for the Franco-Italian term porcelain. After a number of false starts, such as the so-called Medici porcelain, the European search for the secret of porcelain manufacture ended in 1708 with the discovery by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger of a combination of ingredients, including Colditz clay (a type of kaolin), calcined alabaster and quartz, that proved to be suitable for making a hard, white, translucent porcelain, first produced at Meissen. It appears that in this discovery technology transfer from East Asia played little part.
William Cookworthy is credited with finding china clay in Cornwall which made a considerable contribution to the development of porcelain and other whiteware ceramics in the United Kingdom. Cookworthy's factory at Plymouth established in 1768 used Cornish china clay and Cornish china stone to make a form of porcelain the body of which in character closely resembled the Chinese porcelains of the early eighteenth century.