When out looking for treasures at estate sales, garage sales or thrift stores I'm always on the look out for ironstone or most anything white! It always sells well in my Ebay store. I also love white vintage chenille bedspreads. Here are a few photos of my white finds not all are ironstone but still very lovely:
I did a little research on ironstone and found this info on the
White Ironstone China Association website.
Ironstone
china is not porcelain; it is a porous, glaze-covered earthenware, consisting
of clay mixed with iron slag and feldspar, and a small amount of cobalt. First
patented in 1813 by Charles James Mason in Staffordshire, England, it was
decorated with under-glaze transfer patterns. Eventually, by the 1840’s,
undecorated, or white ironstone china, was being manufactured for export to the
Americas. This is the white ironstone china collected today. Older white
ironstone has an almost bluish cast to it, due to the cobalt, while later
examples have a creamy color.
Other
related collectible china includes Tea Leaf ironstone, which is white ironstone
china decorated with copper lustre banding and tea leaf shaped and other
variant lustre motifs. Transferware is the transfer-decorated ironstone that
was first patented by Mason. Flow Blue is ironstone with a blue design, either
a transfer pattern or hand painted brush stroke, that has been fired in an
atmosphere containing volatile chlorides which has caused the design to blur or
bleed into the clear over-glaze.
It is hard for me to tell exactly what I have if it is not marked on the bottom, I'm always very impressed when someone can just look at something and know it's maker! There are some other whites I've found recently...I'll post about them later.
Warm hugs,
