Sherbrooke fruit saucer

Bone china

Bone china is a kind of porcelain body originally used in Britain in which calcined ox bone, bone ash, is an essential part. It is distinguish by extremely high whiteness, translucency and strength. sherbrooke fruit saucer may be an example of this procedure.

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

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

Bone china production mainly uses a 2 stage firing process where the first "biscuit" is fired without a glaze at 1280