Floor lamp Bone China

In the porcelain base of this floor lamp hides a solid steel weight, which gives it a decent stability. To protect the floor, it is equipped with a felt base. The lampshade made of bone china, at an exposed height, perfectly shows off the light-technical advantages of the material. The lamp is switched by means of a foot switch on the power cable.

"Bone China" or "bone china" is one of the finest porcelains. It is bright white and highly resistant to breakage even when drawn out wafer-thin. The most surprising property of bone china, however, is its translucency, silky shimmer and warm hue. The secret of the production of bone china, long known only in China, was revealed around the middle of the 18th century by a small earthenware factory in England: By adding bone ash, it was possible to fire translucent porcelain in a stoneware kiln at 1,200°C. Even today, the difficult mixture of kaolin, feldspar, silica sand and more than 50% vitrified bone ash limits the mechanization of manufacturing and worldwide the number of manufactories that master this craft.

Lamps made by BTC (= British Timeless Classics), in the vicinity of Oxford, have attained the status of timeless classics. The creative spirit and driving force behind the firm is Peter Bowles, who pursues his very clear idea and just as clearly realises his agenda. The process starts with the manufacture: Bowles wants to produce lamps that are British down to the level of detail. For example, the bone china-lamp shades come from a pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, known as the "the Potteries" because of the almost 500 potteries that used to be located there. Almost all are gone today and the firm, which also belongs to Bowles, would not exist except for BTC. He took it over when it was on the brink of bankruptcy and has restructured it while keeping all the employees. The hand-blown glass domes come from a glass blowing shop in Worcestershire which Bowles also bought. In addition to domes for lamps, the shop produces coloured glass windows for historical buildings and churches. A handful of glass blowers with their two small smelting furnaces practice the methods of glass blowing and uphold the once famous English tradition of this trade. The British manufacture of the lamps extends to the cables, too. Bowles was dissatisfied with the plastic wrapped cables on his first lamp, so he used a locally produced cloth wrapped cable from a clothes iron for his exhibition piece. The reaction was so positive that he has used cloth cable since. They are locally produced near the firm in home-based work.