Martinique coffee saucer

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally produced in England in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an important part. It is distinguish by brilliant whiteness, strength and translucency. martinique coffee saucer may be an example of this procedure.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is credited to Thomas Frye in 1748 in which he used it to introduce a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In In the late 18th century, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and duly popularised it, by combining it with China stone, kaolin and china clay to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The manufacture of bone china generally uses a two stage firing process where the initial "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280°C (2336°F) giving a semiopaque product and then it is glaze, or glost, fired at a lower heat less than 1080°C (1976°F). martinique coffee saucer is probably made using this technique.

Soft-paste porcelain

Soft-paste porcelain is a kind of porcelain and consequently a ceramic product.

Its origin dates from the early attempts by European potters to imitate Chinese porcelain by using combinations of china clay and ground-up glass or frit; soapstone and lime were known to have also been employed in some formulations. As these initial concoctions were prone to high pyroplastic collapse, or slumping in the oven at high temperature, it was uneconomical to manufacture them. Mixtures were later used based on feldspars, quartz, nepheline syenite, kaolin and other feldspathic rocks. These were technically superior and are still in production today.

Hard-paste porcelain

Hard-paste porcelain is a hard, dense ceramic that was initially manufactured from a mixture of the feldspathic rock petuntse and kaolin fired at very high temperature. It was first produced in China in around the ninth century.

The secret of its manufacture was not known in Europe until the early 1700s, when Böttger of Meissen, Germany found the formula. In spite of attempts to keep it secret, the process spread to other German ceramic manufacturers and eventually became well known throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

Hard-paste porcelain is known to be fired at a range of temperatures to manufacture a myriad of unique end results. Depending on the firing process, hard-paste porcelain can be made to resemble stoneware or earthenware. Mainly however, it is not necessary to make use of hard-paste porcelain for such lower temperature ceramics. Hard-paste porcelain can be utilized to create porcelain bisque, a hard crystalline material fired at extremely high temperatures in a pressure controlled environment. This approach manufactures a translucent bright white ceramic. Unlike other bisque ceramics, porcelain bisque is almost inpenetrable by water, making it unnecessary to glaze the body before decorating. Manufacturers such as Lladro, Precious Moments and Hummel use hard-paste porcelain exactly for this reason, this could include martinique coffee saucer.