Canterbury small bread and butter plate

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body initially developed in the UK in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is a major ingredient. It is characterised by extreme whiteness, translucency and strength. canterbury small bread and butter plate may be an example of this procedure.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is assigned to Thomas Frye in seventeen-forty-eight in which he used it to introduce a type of soft-paste porcelain. In Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and consequently popularised it, by mixing it with china clay, kaolin and China stone to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The manufacture of bone china consistently involves a 2 stage firing where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280