Angela coffee saucer

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally developed in Great Britain in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is a critical constituent. It is differentiated by high whiteness, strength and translucency. angela coffee saucer may be an example of this process.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is assigned to Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to develop a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late eighteenth century, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and consequently made it popular, by combining it with china clay, China stone and kaolin to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

The initial elemental recipe of four parts china stone, six parts bone ash, and three and a half parts china clay is still the standard English body.

Bone china production routinely makes use of a two stage firing process where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280