Dorchester tea saucer

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body originally produced in England in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an important part. It is characterised by supreme whiteness, translucency and strength. dorchester tea saucer may be an example of this process.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is associated with Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to make a type of soft-paste porcelain. In As the eighteenth century drew to a close, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and consequently popularized it, by combining it with China stone, kaolin and china clay to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The production of bone china usually involves a 2 stage firing process where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280