Dinnerware porcelain

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body first developed in Great Britain in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential ingredient. It is characterised by high whiteness, strength and translucency. dinnerware porcelain may be an example of this process.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is credited to Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to introduce a type of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late eighteenth century, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and consequently popularised it, by mixing it with kaolin, china clay and China stone to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

Bone china production normally makes use of a 2 stage firing process where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280