Belmont cream soup cup

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body first used in the United Kingdom in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential constituent. It is differentiated by brilliant whiteness, translucency and strength. belmont cream soup cup may be an example of this process.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is associated with Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to make a type of soft-paste porcelain. In As the 18th century drew to a close, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and duly made it popular, by mixing it with china clay, kaolin and China stone to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

The original elemental formula of four parts china stone, six parts bone ash, and three and a half parts china clay remains the standard English body.

The production of bone china normally employs a 2 stage firing where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280