Porcelain can be divided into three main groups with different chemical and mineral compositions: hard-paste porcelain, soft-paste porcelain and bone china.
As distinct from stoneware, refined white earthenware, earthenware and faience, all three types of porcelain are slightly translucent and tend to be sufficiently hard-fired to fuse into a kind of natural glass.
Bone china
First developed in England in the 18th century from soft-paste porcelain, bone china (from the 1790s) is a slightly translucent pottery consisting of 50% bone ash, 25% kaolin and 25% “china stone” (a fine-grained, feldspar-rich, kaolinised granite characterised by the absence of iron-bearing minerals). Bone china is fully vitrified. It is known for its mechanical and physical hardness, its chip resistance and its bright white body.
Translation Sandy Haemmerle
French: porcelaine à base d’os (bone china)
German: Knochenporzellan
