English Bone China Tea Cup

The English bone china tea cup. This simple term covers a whole range of English tea culture history.

Many people today love these tea cups and the history and culture that they represent.

How Is It Made

The first question that many people have when they start looking into bone china is whether it actually contains bone.

If it is real bone china, the answer is yes.

Bone china can be dated back to the nineteenth century and it was an attempt by the Englishman, Josiah Spode, to replace the Chinese import of porcelain.

Porcelain is something that many people were interested in at the time. But because the secret for making the material was kept in China, import prices made true porcelain pieces difficult and expensive to obtain.

Bone china, on other hand, could be made cheaply and inexpensively in England. It contains the ash of animal bone, china clay and china stone. The animal bone ash might make up as much as fifty percent of the recipe. Though the amounts would vary from potter to potter.

The result was a fine porcelain that was cheap to produce and significantly tougher than classical Chinese porcelain.

An English bone china tea cup, with careful handling, can last for decades.

In many cases, these beautiful teacups were printed or hand painted with lovely designs that remain bright and beautiful to this day.

Collecting

If you are interested in collecting bone china, you will find that the pieces that you can find can vary dramatically in price.

Their price will be based on their popularity, their condition and their rarity, with condition often being the most important factor.

Though bone china does tend to be tougher than hard paste porcelain or soft paste porcelain, it will still require gentle handling. Chips, cracks and crazing, will all contribute to a drop in value.

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