A porcelain plate goes into the kiln twice, and the two visits could not be more different. The first is gentle and forgiving. The second is neither.
The body starts as a fine white slip: kaolin, feldspar and quartz, milled until it runs like cream. It is cast into a plaster mould that drinks the water out of it, leaving a shell of clay the thickness of a coin. When it is firm enough to hold its own weight the plate is lifted out, and its rim is turned and sponged by hand until the edge is even. This is the moment when a plate becomes a Lino plate rather than a plate in general. The rim is low and slightly coved, so that the well of the plate reads as one continuous surface.
Then it dries for two days. Porcelain that is fired damp will crack, so nothing here is hurried.
The first firing is called the biscuit. The kiln climbs to around 950°C over several hours and holds there. The clay loses its last water and stiffens into something that rings when tapped, but it is still porous, chalky and pale. At this stage the plate can be handled, inspected and glazed, and anything with a flaw in the body is set aside. About one plate in twelve does not go further.
The glaze is applied by dipping. The plate is held by its foot, lowered into a vat and lifted out in one movement, so the coat is even and there is no drip line. The matte finish on the outside of a Lino plate and the satin finish inside are two different glazes, applied in two dips with a wax resist between them. The foot ring is wiped clean so that the plate can stand on a bare kiln shelf.
The second firing is the one that matters. The kiln goes to 1,400°C, and at that heat the porcelain body vitrifies: the quartz softens, the feldspar melts into glass between the particles, and the whole thing fuses into a single dense material that will no longer absorb water. The glaze melts at the same time and bonds with the body underneath it, which is why a porcelain glaze does not chip off in flakes the way an earthenware glaze can.
Fired too low, the body stays porous and the glaze sits on the surface like frost. Fired too high, the plate slumps and the rim goes soft.
The window between those two failures is about 40 degrees. The kiln has a controller, but the people who run it also read the cones, the small pyramids of clay that bend at known temperatures, and they read the colour of the fire through the spy hole. They have been doing this for three generations and they trust their eyes over the dial.
Porcelain shrinks by roughly 14% across the two firings. A plate that will finish at 28 cm goes into the first kiln closer to 32 cm. The mould is made to allow for it, but the shrinkage is never perfectly even, and this is why no two rims fall exactly alike. Hold two Lino dinner plates together and you will see it. It is not a fault. It is the record of the process.
After the second firing the plates cool on open racks overnight, because a plate taken out hot will craze. In the morning each one is weighed, sounded with a knuckle and held up to the window. A hairline crack rings flat. A glaze pinhole shows against the light. Anything that fails goes back to the body and is milled again.
What arrives at your table is a plate that weighs 760 g, holds an edge you can feel with a fingertip, goes in the dishwasher and the oven, and will look the same in 20 years as it does today. That is what the second firing buys.