Forsyth soup tureen

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 brilliant whiteness, strength and translucency. forsyth soup tureen may be an example of this process.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is assigned to Thomas Frye in seventeen-forty-eight in which he used it to introduce a type of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late 18th century, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and duly popularized it, by combining it with kaolin, China stone and china clay to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The manufacture of bone china normally uses a 2 stage firing process where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280