Porcelain and stoneware are two types of high-fire clays.  Both come in many different varieties according to mineral content, texture, color, and maturing temperature. 

Stoneware clays can be quite coarse and contain many impurities like iron and manganese that not only give the clay a range of colors but also combine with glazes under certain conditions to yield variegated surfaces that impart depth and warmth to the piece and drive an aesthetic that reflects the minerals and earth from which both the clay and glazes come.  

Porcelain is much more pure and is always white.  It is a more feldspathic clay, which means that it becomes significantly more vitreous than stoneware to the extent that some fired porcelains are translucent and transmit light easily. Glazes on porcelain appear radically different, often more uniform and subtle, and hearken to a more classical style.

I work in both types of clay, and my pieces are fired to around 2300F in a gas kiln at Hinckley Pottery in Washington, D.C.  The glazes I use in these firings are mostly American reformulations of ancient glazes from Korea and Japan, including Celadon, Tenmoku, and my favorite, Shino.

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