Perhaps rib friend providing fine dishes? (4,5)
I believe the answer is:
bone china
'perhaps rib' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'friend providing fine dishes?' is the wordplay.
'friend providing' becomes 'bone' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'fine dishes?' becomes 'china' (I've seen this in another clue).
'bone'+'china'='BONE CHINA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for bone china that I've seen before include "fragile" , "High quality porcelain" , "Material from Potter" , "Type of fine porcelain" , "What may make service" .)