Canton tea cream

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body initially used in the UK in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an important constituent. It is differentiated by extreme whiteness, translucency and strength. canton tea cream may be an example of this procedure.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is credited to Thomas Frye in the mid eighteenth century in which he used it to make a type of soft-paste porcelain. In Towards the end of the 18th century, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and consequently made it popular, by combining it with china clay, kaolin and China stone to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

Bone china production mainly involves a two stage firing where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280