English Bone China
A Smashing Tradition

As an insider, the English bone china tradition fascinates me. I am proud to be involved in it's rich heritage. It was the English porcelain makers who discovered bone china and still today most fine bone china production is in the UK.

Below is 'Rosita', one of my bone china figurines made by Royal Doulton.

On this page you get my take on the bone-china industry and its intriguing history.

Visit my pages on antique bone china and modern bone china manufacturers to get a who's who of international makers and where they are today.

Porcelain was developed by the chinese over 2000 years ago (Late Eastern Han period or even earlier), but, hey!, it was the Brits who took it one stage further and invented fine bone china (from the original porcelain recipe).


Recipes for porcelain were so guarded people hid inside barrels to overhear the secrets.

If you are interested in finding out more detail about the different types of clays and porcelain 'bodies', the best online guide I have found is www.studioporcelain.com (website sometimes goes down). If you need to research backstamps, go to eFine Antiques.

The history of ceramics goes back to the late stone age some 30,000 years ago see my 'clay art' section.

Fast forward to Europe Year 1700. The race was on to emulate what the Chinese had perfected 2 millennia ago - porcelain! The Saxons won the race. In 1710 in a factory near Meissen (now Germany, then Saxony) produced the first hard paste porcelain.

Johann Boettger was the genius behind this infamous story. Johann Kandler was the sculptor/modeler through who's genius that Meissen porcelain figurines gained world renown from 1731 onwards.

One of the key differences between bone china and hard-paste porcelain is that with the addition of ground-up animals bones, fine bone china chips less easily. Soft paste porcelain, which is all there was in European production before 1700's, is so soft it can be filed down.

Ironically, English bone china was intended to be a cheaper substitute for hard-paste porcelain but by 1800 it had become the standard high quality medium throughout England, due to its resistance to damage and fine translucence.



English bone china figurines have been regarded as precious collectibles since their initial production over 200 years ago.

My inspiration initially was the work of Charles J. Noke. A genius as a sculptor/modeler, he took production by the scruff of its neck, and, in a similar way to Johann Kandler at the Meissen factory 200 years previously, and made Royal Doulton figurines a tour de force.

This incredible Falstaff sculpture was released in 1950 and was still in the shops when I was beginning my Royal Doulton career in 1992. 42 years is a good run, don't you think?


More on Charles Noke and the Royal Doulton figurines story later.

John Rose, the founder, insisted upon magnificent colors and fine detail. I have worked with this factory for 11 years and I can vouch for the fact that John Rose's values still permeate the works to this day. How incredible is that? Incredible but true. I'll tell you more in the Coalport figurines section.

Each of the three leading English bone china brands I work with (Royal Doulton, Royal Worcester, as well as Coalport) have their own distinctive values and skills. Amazingly, fine bone china figurines are still collected today by connoisseurs as fervently as ever.


Just one recent Limited edition Royal Worcester piece of mine launched in 1998 turned over £1.5m (aprox $3 million USD). If you want to know more about the figurine 'Tara' - Medieval Princess and the prestigious Royal Worcester factory, please go to the Royal Worcester figurines page.

One of the most world famous names in English bone china is Wedgwood (often mis-spelt as Wegdewood). A triumph of ingenuity and persistance, you can read about the early days of the company and how the brand progressed to the the modern day, in the Wedgwood bone china section.

In c.1765 Wedgwood was named 'Potter to Her Majesty' leading to a huge amount of publicity for the company. So why isn't Wedgwood called 'Royal Wedgwood' like the other English potters with royal warrants? Read all about the royal connections in the 'Royal Bone China' Section.