Medina tea saucer

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body initially developed in the United Kingdom in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential constituent. It is characterized by supreme whiteness, translucency and strength. medina tea saucer may be an example of this procedure.

The initial use of bone ash in ceramics is assigned to Thomas Frye in seventeen-forty-eight in which he used it to introduce a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Josiah Spode undertook further developments, and consequently made it popular, by combining it with China stone, kaolin and china clay to compete with the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

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