Canton sauce boat

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body originally developed in Great Britain in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is a critical part. It is distinguish by extremely high whiteness, translucency and strength. canton sauce boat may be an example of this process.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is associated with Thomas Frye in 1748 in which he used it to develop a type of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late eighteenth century, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and duly made it popular, by combining it with China stone, china clay and kaolin to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The manufacture of bone china routinely makes use of a 2 stage firing where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280