Darjeeling salad bowl

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally produced in the UK in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential part. It is characterised by high whiteness, strength and translucency. darjeeling salad bowl may be an example of this procedure.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is associated with Thomas Frye in the mid eighteenth century in which he used it to introduce a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In Towards the end of the 18th century, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and duly popularised it, by mixing it with China stone, china clay and kaolin to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

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