Haworth coffee cup demitasse

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally used in Britain in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an important constituent. It is characterized by brilliant whiteness, translucency and strength. haworth coffee cup/demitasse may be an example of this procedure.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is credited to 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 clay, China stone and kaolin to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

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