f the fragments archaeologists retrieve are to be believed, man and womankind have used raw mud or clay to make crockery since the very earliest times - with varying degrees of success and longevity. It is believed the first basic dishes were made from dried raw mud. It is unlikely we will ever know how the discovery that fire created extra strength was made; chances are it was pure chance. Later, types of varnish created a waterproofing of sorts.

Thousands of years ago, the Chinese began innovating. The country's dignitaries had used jade, a semi-precious stone to make bowls to drink from. But jade was too rare and therefore expensive for it to be used everyday, so they searched for another material to replace it. A white clay, found in the south-east of China near the hills of Kao-Lin was the answer to their problems. It could be fashioned into the required shape, fired at very high temperatures and the result was a beautiful, translucent and solid piece of China - quite literally!

The Chinese developed their techniques considerably, creating such beautiful objets d'art as those that we now associate with the various ruling families, the most famous of which is perhaps the Ming Dynasty.

The Italian explorer, Marco Polo spent around 20 years in China in the 13th Century, returning to Venice in 1271. With him he brought samples of a new material which he is believed to have called 'porcellana'. He started a trend - with plenty of people trying to recreate the mother-of-pearl effect of the 'new' material.

It was the growing importance of the silk and fabric trades between Europe and the Far East which indirectly gave a real boost to porcelain. If ships were to be loaded with fabric, they needed to have a heavy weight low down inside to balance the vessel safely. Chinese white porcelain was perfect for the job. Once this incidental cargo reached Europe, it was sold by the ship owners. Fashionable members of society attempted to have them decorated in the same way as they would earthenware, but the pieces were far from perfect. Even sending samples of painted porcelain back to China for copying did not prove a great success, as the Chinese tended to add their own extra, and unwanted touches.

The Europeans persevered in different ways. British companies, like Wedgewood began adding powdered animal bones to the mixture to create what has become known as bone china. Meanwhile, the Germans added sand to the kaolin in a technique called vitrification which gives a glassy feel to the final product. It is still used by the famous company, Villeroy and Boch.

Kaolin was the raw material everyone wanted to discover. The first find in Europe is believed to have been made in Meissen in Germany in 1709. Other countries continued their own searches for the material and sixty years later, the discovery on which a whole French industry has been built was made completely by chance, or so the story goes.

In a small village near the town of Limoges in central France, a surgeon watched his wife washing their clothes in the river. She used a white clay from the water in lieu of soap. Thinking it may be a new cleaning material, he sent a sample to a laboratory for tests. The scientists found the clay to be the much sought-after kaolin.

There was much excitement at the find, which reached all the way to the very pinnacle of French society. King Louis XV opened a royal factory in Limoges on 15 March 1771. His successor, Louis XVI, brought it under the wing of the Sevres porcelain factory, which remains the producer of the prestigious pieces given by the French government as presents and used at official dinners.

Today, the name of Limoges is still synonymous with that of fine porcelain. Medals or no medals, the products from that French town are sought-after the world over and sold on all five continents. It is certainly not the only European centre for the production of such fine pieces, but it has been an inspiration to many and is widely perceived as one of the very best.