Whiteware

any of a broad class of ceramic products that

are white to off-white in appearance and
frequently contain a significant vitreous, or
glassy, component. Including products as
diverse as fine china dinnerware, lavatory
sinks and toilets, dental implants, and spark-
plug insulators.
 Raw materials: clay, flint, and
feldspar

Whitewares are often referred to

as triaxial bodies, owing to the
three mineral types—clay, silica,
and feldspar—consistently found
in their makeup.
• Clay is the plastic component, giving shaping
abilities to the unfired product and also
serving as a glass former during firing. Flint
(the common name used in the industry for all
forms of silica) serves as a filler, lending
strength to the shaped body before and
during firing. Feldspar serves as a fluxing
agent, lowering the melting temperatures of
the mixture.
Clay is the most important of the ingredients,
and the most important clay used in fine
whiteware products is kaolin, also known as
china clay.
Kaolin is the only type of clay from which a
white, translucent, vitreous ceramic can be
made.
It is a refractory clay, meaning that it can be
fired at high temperatures without deforming,
and it is white-burning, meaning that it
imparts whiteness to the finished ware.
Whiteware products are often differentiated
into three main classes—porous,
semivitreous, and vitreous—according to
their degree of vitrification (and resulting
porosity). Proceeding from porous to
vitreous, more particular product categories
include earthenware, stoneware, china, and
technical porcelains.
Earthenware is non-vitreous and of
medium porosity. It is often glazed to
provide fluid impermeability and an
attractive finish. Specific products
include tableware and decorative tile
ware.
Whitewares all depend for their utility upon a
relatively small set of properties:
imperviousness to fluids, low conductivity of
electricity, chemical inertness, and an ability to
be formed into complex shapes. These
properties are determined by the mixture of raw
materials chosen for the products, as well as by
the forming and firing processes employed in
their manufacture.
the raw materials, properties, and
applications of whiteware ceramics at a
certain points in the article there are
references to specific industrial processes
employed in the manufacture of whiteware
products.
For more detailed description of these
processes, see industrial ceramics.
Raw materials: clay, flint, and feldspar

• Kaolin is formed principally of the

mineral kaolinite, a hydrous
aluminosilicate with a fine, platy
structure; its ideal chemical
formula is Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4.
China clays are composed mostly of well-
ordered kaolinite, with no impurities. Lower-
grade whitewares are usually made of ball
clays, which incorporate ordered and
disordered kaolinite plus other clay minerals
and impurities. These impurities—particularly
iron oxides—render the fired ware off-white
to gray or tan in colour.
 Whiteware Products
• Stoneware is a semivitreous or
vitreous whiteware with a fine
microstructure (that is, a fine
arrangement of solid phases and
glass on the micrometre level).
Products include tableware,
cookware, chemical ware, and
sanitary ware (e.g., drainpipe).
All vitreous whitewares are often
referred to as porcelains, but in the
ceramics industry a distinction is
maintained between the true
porcelains (or technical porcelains)
and china.
• China is vitreous whiteware for
nontechnical applications. Because of its
high glass content, it can be used
unglazed, though it also can be glazed for
aesthetic appeal. China is known for high
strength and impact resistance and also
for low water absorption—all deriving
from the high glass content.
Typical products include hotel china, a
lower grade of china tableware with a
strength and impact resistance suiting
it to commercial use; fine china
(including bone china), a highly
vitreous, translucent tableware; and
sanitary plumbing fixtures.
Technical porcelains, like china, are
vitreous and nonporous. They are
similarly strong and impact-resistant,
but they are also chemically inert in
corrosive environments and are
excellent insulators against electricity.
Applications include chemical ware,
dental implants, and electric
insulators, including spark-plug
insulators in automobile engines.
 Processing
• The forming and firing processes
employed in the manufacture of
whiteware products are outlined in
the article industrial ceramics.
Typically, pressing is employed in the
forming of tiles, chemical ware, and
technical porcelains; extrusion in the
forming of tiles and sanitary ware
(including pipe); and slip casting in the
forming of plumbing fixtures and some
tableware. In addition to these
standard processes, jiggering is
employed in the manufacture of
tableware.
Jiggering involves the mixing of a
plastic mass and turning it on a wheel
beneath a template to a specified size
and shape.
Most whitewares are fired in continuous tunnel
kilns. The porous varieties are fired at lower
temperatures (1,100–1,250 °C, or approximately
2,000–2,300 °F), whereas china and true
porcelains are fired at 1,250 to 1,300 °C (2,300
to 2,400 °F).

Porous and semivitreous whitewares may be

glazed in a second firing to produce an
impermeable glass coating for decorative or
functional purposes.
One of the great advantages of the triaxial
composition of whitewares is that it makes
the formed piece relatively insensitive to
minor changes in composition and in firing
time or temperature. This stability is a
result of the wide range of temperatures
over which the three ingredients melt to
form glass.
As an example, in a typical feldspar-clay-silica
composition for porcelain, a whiteware with a
particularly high glassy component, small grains
of feldspar would begin to form liquid at
temperatures as low as 990 °C (1,810 °F), and
large feldspar grains would be molten by 1,140
°C (2,080 °F). Because of the high viscosity of the
liquid formed, there would be no change in the
shape of the ceramic piece until approximately
1,200 °C (2,200 °F).
Above this temperature the feldspar grains
would react with surrounding clay particles
to form glass, and “needles” of mullite (a
crystalline aluminosilicate mineral formed
during the firing of clay-silica mixtures)
would grow into the liquid regions. In
addition, the surfaces of silica particles
would begin to dissolve and form solution
rims, or envelopes of glass surrounding the
crystalline particle.
As more and more of the silica
particles dissolved, the resulting glass
would become increasingly viscous,
helping to maintain the integrity of the
piece.