Short answers, pulled from the story.
The name porcelain derives from the Italian word porcellana, meaning cowrie shell, which refers to the smooth, lustrous surface of the shell that early European traders associated with the delicate, translucent wares they first encountered from China.
True porcelain with the required whiteness and translucency first evolved during the Eastern Han dynasty, which lasted from 25 to 220 CE, although proto-porcelain wares date back to the Shang dynasty between 1600 and 1046 BCE.
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced the first hard, white, translucent specimen of European porcelain in 1708 using kaolin and alabaster mined from a Saxon mine in Colditz.
The Meissen factory was established in 1710, producing porcelain that was once-fired and noted for its great resistance to thermal shock.
A formulation of dental porcelain contains 70 to 85 percent feldspar, 12 to 25 percent quartz, 3 to 5 percent kaolin, up to 15 percent glass, and around 1 percent colorants.
Japanese porcelain production began after the arrival of Korean potters that were taken captive during the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598, who brought an improved type of kiln and spotted a source of porcelain clay near Arita.