McCoy is a brand of pottery that was produced in the United States in the late 19th and 20th century. McCoy pottery items are considered valuable collectibles, and often fetch high prices at auctions and in collectors specialty sales venues such as antique shops.
In April of 1910, Nelson McCoy (Senior), with help from his father (J. W. McCoy) and along with five stockholders, established the Nelson McCoy Sanitary and Stoneware Company in Roseville, Ohio. The pottery produced utilitarian stoneware and operated successfully until about 1918. They also bought, sold, and mined clay. At that time the pottery joined with eleven other stoneware potteries and formed the American Clay Products Company (APCP), which was located in Zanesville, Ohio. All of the member potteries produced stoneware to be marketed by the new company. The ACPC produced sales catalogs of the wares that were produced, which purposely had no trademark, and had salesmen to advertise and take orders. The pottery orders received by the company were shared among the different potteries based on production capability, and the revenue received was proportionally distributed.
Porcelain was named after its resemblance to the white, shiny cowry, called in old Italian porcella (little pig), because the curved shape of its upper surface resembles the curve of a pig's back. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability, high strength, hardness, glassiness, high durability, whiteness, translucence, resonance, brittleness, high resistance to the passage of electricity, high resistance to chemical attack, high resistance to thermal shock and high elasticity.
For the purposes of trade, the Combined Nomenclature of the European Communities defines porcelain as being "completely vitrified, hard, impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness) and resonant." However, the term porcelain lacks a universally agreed definition and has "been applied in a very unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds which have only certain surface-qualities in common" (Burton 1906).
Porcelain is used to make table, kitchen, sanitary and decorative wares, objects of fine art and tiles. Its high resistance to the passage of electricity makes porcelain an excellent insulating material and it is widely used for high-voltage insulators. It is also used in dentistry to make false teeth, caps and crowns.
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