Bone ash

Bone ash

Description

A white powdery material made by calcining bones, usually from cattle. Bone ash primarily contains Calcium hydroxyapatite with small amounts of Magnesium phosphate, Calcium carbonate, and Calcium fluoride. It is used as a polishing agent and as a flux in ceramics. Bone china can contain 25-50% bone ash. Bone ash has also been used as a pigment called Bone white in grounds for silver point drawings.

Calcined bone

Calcined bone

Synonyms and Related Terms

bone earth; bone white (AAT); calcined bone

FTIR (MFA)

Raman (UCL)

XRD (MFA)

SEM (MFA)

EDS (MFA)

XRF (MFA)

Risks

Noncombustible. Inhalation of ingestion may cause slight problems.

Illinois Art: [SDS]

Resources and Citations

• Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Michael McCann, Artist Beware, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York City, 1979

• Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Practical Pottery, Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1992

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000