Lithophane is a form of art in which a plate of some translucent material is shaped so that, when backlit, it displays a detailed image. In 19th-century Europe, lithophanes were commonly carved into wax and then molded from porcelain. Patents for this method of production were brought out by several inventors in the late 1820s, although there have been suggestions that they may have been modeled after similar porcelain work from China, from as early as the Song dynasty in the 10th through 13th centuries. More recently, lithophanes have been created by 3d printing, and suggested as a way of making images accessible to vision-impaired people through touch. References Porcelain Types of pottery decoration