French for 'Good friend'. (bon = good, ami = friend)

Un bon ami would be a good male friend.
Une bonne amie would be a good female friend.

In America, Bon "Am-eye" is a "good friend" to housekeepers everywhere. Less abrasive than any other powder cleanser, its three principal ingredients are limestone, feldspar and sodium bicarbonate, thus rendering it a natural for windows, porcelain, and any other hard surface that needs a soft touch, and has retained this simple recipe since 1886, a product of the Beaham family run Faultless Starch Company of Kansas City, MO.

Strange though it may seem, this invaluable product has often been hard to obtain for many consumers: due to a longstanding policy against dealing with firms that charged slotting fees, Bon Ami was sold for many years through the mail, in hardware stores, and in many out-of-the-way places, before getting a shot in the arm from an unlikely source -- publisher/shopkeeper/computer wizard Stewart Brand, who promoted the product as eco-friendly and hypo-allergenic in his Whole Earth Catalogs and magazines, thus beginning a Bon Ami renaissance that continues even today, with the product on many housekeeping "must-have" and "best tool" products lists on the Web and elsewhere.

With a spunky, postmodern package design featuring its iconic newly-hatched chicken, it retains its brazen boast "Hasn't Scratched Yet!"

A variant exists, Bon Ami Red, which is feldspar + tallow soap, which is sold as "1886 Formula" which has been used as a molding material for small jobs, as well as a cleanser in itself, available only online in caselots. For tougher jobs, I suggest the somewhat grittier -- in many ways--Bar Keepers Friend.

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