Bisque Porcelain Antique Lamps or biscuit porcelain, takes its name from it's first or initial firing, when the brittle porcelain could be snapped off like a biscuit. Bisque porcelain is also widely known as "biscuit ware", unglazed ware and more popularly as "parian" ware.
All Bisque Porcelain Antique Lamps are unglazed and in Victorian times was admired for its sculptural qualities. The name "Parian" is in fact attributed to Thomas Minton, the famous 19th century English potter, who coined the name Parian after Paros, the Greek island that quarried much of the pure white sculptural marble used in studios.
Of course, the originator of Bisque Porcelain Antique Lamps was China, including unglazed white bisque porcelain. Known to the Chinese potters as "Fan Ts'u". China was, before the 18th century, the only producer of porcelain in the world and this fact is commemorated by the standard name we give to porcelain, China!