Orchard hill sauce boat

Bone china

Bone china is a type of porcelain body originally produced in the United Kingdom in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential constituent. It is characterized by supreme whiteness, translucency and strength. orchard hill sauce boat may be an example of this process.

The first use of bone ash in ceramics is attributed to Thomas Frye in the mid eighteenth century in which he used it to develop a kind of soft-paste porcelain. In Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Josiah Spode undertook further developments, and duly popularised it, by mixing it with China stone, china clay and kaolin to compete against the imported Oriental porcelain.

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

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