The beautiful and delicate porcelains of China and Japan were taken to Europe after the opening of trade with Asia. They created such an intense fashion for fine porcelain with the ruling classes that it was called a "china mania." Kings vied with each other in attempts to discover the secret of true porcelain jealously guarded by the Asians. The nobility were no longer satisfied with vessels of opaque earthenware, and even gold and silver services gave way to the more highly prized porcelains.
As early as 1580 Francesco de' Medici had manufactured in Florence a ware with a translucent body called porcelain. This was not the true Chinese porcelain but a soft-paste porcelain made of various mixtures of white firing clay and glass, or frit. The manufacture of this soft-paste porcelain spread through France, Italy, and England until it was finally displaced by true, or hard-paste, porcelain, whose secret of manufacture became known in Europe.
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