Juliet coffee saucer demitasse

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally used in the United Kingdom in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is a major ingredient. It is characterised by high whiteness, translucency and strength. juliet coffee saucer/demitasse may be an example of this procedure.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is credited to Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to develop a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late 18th century, Josiah Spode continued with further developments, and consequently popularized it, by mixing it with China stone, china clay and kaolin to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

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