Barbaric Pottery and Things of That Nature

Fine Bone China is somewhat literally named. It is made by grinding up bone burnt bone ash and added the resultant powered to a mixture of clay and ground stone. This helps bind the clay allowing you to make much finer, or thinner walled, cups and saucers, or tea pots etc.
This is an ‘ancient Chinese process’, invented in Stoke on Trent in the 1790’s and used to allow British potters to compete with imported porcelain. Indeed it was only called Bone ‘China’ because the rich almost exclusively bought expensive imported Chinese porcelain and so owning a set of fine ‘China’ was considered aspirational among the middle classes.

Buying a set of Bone China was the equivalent of buying a knock off Chinese copy of a Gucci bag. Only the British potters were doing the knocking off. It was also why ‘willow pattern’ Chinese plates were such a popular design, with its ‘ancient Chinese folk story’ told in the pattern that was first designed in Stoke on Trent and is exactly as Chinese as Robbie Williams and Stanley Mathews aren’t.

Bone ash, ground stone and clay are relatively cheap and bone ash really is a great binding agent. As you may imagine, you get bone ash by burning bones. Specify in the case of most fine bone China, the leg bones of cows. Why the leg bones of cows you ask? Well mainly as cow leg bones have a low iron content, burn hotter, produce a finer ash and that helps add to the translucent qualities of fine bone China.

However, while cow leg bones are reputedly the best for the process, most any animal bone will do, chicken perhaps, or horse, or indeed when it comes down to it human… All you need is the right kind of furnace. It is possible therefore, if you are of a mind, to make fine bone China out of the bones of your vanquish foes…

Note. I say possible, not legal, nor entirely ethical…

That said however, skulls are bones. Ergo, if you learn the porters art and find yourself not entirely burdened by moralistic constraints it is possible to drink from the skulls of your enemies. in the most civilized British way imaginable..

This appeals to my barbarian potters soul…

In other news strange people, the kind of people who might well drink tea from the fine bone China of their vanquished foes have been singing things… (actually they are perfectly lovely people who have never ground the bones of their enemies because they don’t have any enemies… )

Feral Folk

Not any more at any rate…

Also in other news the ever lovely Madeleine Holly-Rosing, the writer/creator of the popular and long-running steampunk supernatural series, Boston Metaphysical Society. has a kickstarted going on for her other series Morgana Pendragon. As ever I recommend anything she is involved in.

click on the entirely appropriate picture below to find out more,

Madeleine almost certainly doesn’t drink tea from the fine bone China of their vanquished foes, due to being American and prefering coffee…

And finally as we are on about barbaric things… A reminder that the latest Harvey Duckman anthology is out there in the world, a somewhat pagan delight called Knot On Tree, Fire On Stone: Curse On Axe and Bloody Thrones , because sometimes a title does not know when to stop… (its actually from an ancient four line pagan war poem me an Gillie made up on New years day, that is to say that special kind of ancient that applies to things that aren’t…