Find out all about Bone China, Porcelain and Ceramic now

Introduction

When I search for bone china, porcelain, and ceramic, I found that many articles on the front page actually didn’t make it clear. Here we organized the top related questions that people are interested in, and hopefully, you can stop searching for the answers from elsewhere!

Topics of this article includes

What is bone china?

Difference between bone china, porcelain, and ceramic?

Bone china vs new bone china?

Why is bone china expensive?

Why do people add bone ash in bone china?

How to tell if you bone china products are real?

Bone china, porcelain, ceramic, which one should I choose?

what is bone china?

Bone china is a kind of porcelain, also called fine bone china, bone porcelain, is a type of ceramic that uses bone ash, clay, feldspathic material and kaolin as basic material.

Bone china needs to go through two times of firing, high temperature(1250℃) firing, which is also called biscuit firing, and lower temperature(1150℃) firing, also called glaze firing. For decorated bone china products, the firing process is even more complicated, which may reach 3-5 times firing to get the final products.

Bone china is a kind of porcelain, also called fine bone china, bone porcelain, is a type of ceramic that uses bone ash, clay, feldspathic material and kaolin as basic material.

Bone china needs to go through two times of firing, high temperature(1250℃) firing, which is also called biscuit firing, and lower temperature(1150℃) firing, also called glaze firing. For decorated bone china products, the firing process is even more complicated, which may reach 3-5 times firing to get the final products.

For detailed information about bone china, please refer to the post: https://luxurybonechina.com/what-is-fine-bone-china/

Difference between bone china, porcelain, and ceramic?

Ceramic is the largest category of standard terminology, ceramic often divided into two categories, pottery and porcelain. Pottery includes earthenware, stoneware, and faience. Porcelain includes soft-paste, hard-paste, and bone china.

As mentioned above, bone china is a kind of porcelain, but with some different making processes and ingredients, while porcelain is a kind of ceramic.

As the finest porcelain, bone china are thin, translucent when held up to light; they have a particularly smooth texture, a beautiful luster, and they are comparatively lightweight, which make bone china the best choice for high-end hotels, gift choices.

From the appearance, Ceramic mugs have thicker sides (although the degree of thickness will vary), they are always opaque, and they are comparatively heavy and sturdy, while porcelain mugs are usually much lighter and whiter.

You can check our article before: Difference Between Ceramic and Porcelain (1) for detailed information.

Bone china vs new bone china?

Many people maybe confused by the two concept. Well, new bone china, also called new bone, is not bone china, it’s a term to confuse clients and in fact, it is still porcelain, some business merchant uses the conception to confuse new buyers.

Main differences between new bone China and bone China

1. Use different ingredients. More than 40% bone powder was added to the bone China, and no bone powder was added to the new bone China.

2. Bone China is fired twice and new bone China is fired once.

3. Bone China is softer than new bone China in whiteness, higher in transparency, lighter in weight, and far better in appearance than new bone China.

Why is bone china expensive?

1. From manufacturing aspect, the cost of bone china is within most of people’s budget, price is not as high as expected, for example, most of the white bone china mugs from factory is less than $1, which is apparently affordable.
2. The manufacturing cost of bone china is more than other ceramic products for 3 reasons.

The adding of bone ash.

The adding of bone ash is the reason of light-weight yet durable features of bone china.

The firing process.

While other ceramic products only require 1 time firing, the making of bone china requires two times firing,

The difficulty of making.

Still, with the adding of bone ash, it’s difficult for the forming of bone china products, especially for the bigger items, that’s why price for large bone china plates, bowls, mugs are much more expensive than smaller ones.

For many customers, they are paying extra for the designs and brands. The price customers buying are much more than the actually cost, this is the case with almost all kinds of different products,bags, shoes, cloths and so on. The fancy brands are also made of ordinary materials, the designs, details, brands, marketing methods makes the differences.

Why do people add bone ash in bone china?

While the porcelain was first made in China, the invention of bone china was originally from UK, we don’t know how exactly they come up with the ideal of adding bone ash into the ingredient, but we do know that the adding of bone ash makes the porcelain look fantastic, translucent, extra thin, and from the very beginning, it become the choice of the UK imperial and royal families.

Now in Tangshan China, the industry line of bone china is quite mature, from the choices, quality and quantity of white bone chinaware, the design development, it has been ranking in the top places of making of bone china for many years.

How to tell if you bone china products are real?

Don’t trust the logo you see on the bottom of the products. Yeah, sad fact. Unless your pieces are handed down from long time ago, or you are buying from the formal channels, there is a high chance that the logo doesn’t mean much, as bone china manufacturer can make the products just as their customers requirements, from design, shape, or logo, like any other products.

On the other hand, there are also some ways you can check whether the pieces you are choosing are bone china or not, you can check the quality of bone china by your eyes, hands, and ears. Here are some identification methods we’ve talked about before. How to identify bone china and porcelain.

Which one should I choose?

It all depends.

There are so many options to choose from that it can be hard to know whether you’re making the best decision, however, there is no best choice, but right choice that suits your needs. the choice among bone china, porcelain and other ceramic mugs should be made on the basis of occasion and suitability. Bone china mugs are good choices if you aim at high-end market and you want something good,an air of elegance is desired, porcelain mugs are good choices when durability is not a major concern and it’s just for ordinary use. Other ceramic mugs are good choices when practical, sturdy mugs are needed.

Of course, cost is also a major concern. In most cases, bone china is relatively of higher price than porcelain, and porcelain is more expensive than ceramic.

Stay tuned if you want to know more information about bone china and porcelain, pleas leave a message if you find anything useful in the article, that would help us to be seen by more visitors who want to know it just like you!