Henley teapot

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body first developed in England in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential constituent. It is characterised by extreme whiteness, strength and translucency. henley teapot may be an example of this process.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is assigned to Thomas Frye in the mid eighteenth century in which he used it to develop a type of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late 18th century, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and subsequently made it popular, by mixing it with China stone, kaolin and china clay to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The production of bone china consistently makes use of a two stage firing where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280