Medina tea cup

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body originally developed in the United Kingdom in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is a major constituent. It is differentiated by extreme whiteness, translucency and strength. medina tea cup may be an example of this process.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is associated with Thomas Frye in in the late 1740s in which he used it to make a type of soft-paste porcelain. In As the 18th century drew to a close, Josiah Spode carried on with further developments, and subsequently popularised it, by combining it with china clay, kaolin and China stone to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

The production of bone china consistently makes use of a 2 stage firing process where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280