Whiteness

Bone china is usually described as white, but its white has a character of its own: soft, warm and deep rather than cold and bright.

Where the white comes from

Three things set the colour. The calcium phosphate that gives bone china its name fires to a clean white. The china clay and china stone used are chosen for their purity. And makers work hard to keep out iron, which turns ceramic grey or yellow: the liquid body is passed over magnets before it is shaped.

Because the colour belongs to the body, a chip or a broken edge shows the same white underneath. Decoration sits on a white that is the material itself.

Warm or cool?

Bone china tends towards a warm, slightly creamy white. Many hard-paste porcelains, fired in a different atmosphere and with different crystals, look cooler and slightly blue-grey beside it. Neither is better: they are different whites, and designers choose between them deliberately. Some makers describe their bone china as ivory; others aim for as bright a white as possible.

On the table

White is the most studied colour in plate research. In one laboratory study, the same strawberry mousse was rated sweeter and more intensely flavoured when served on a white plate than on a black one. That finding is about white plates, not about bone china specifically — but a white body is where bone china begins. Plate design and perception looks at the evidence.