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Company History
History timeline
The factorys trademark
symbolises the three waterways
of Denmark
The Royally Chartered Porcelain Manufactory is founded as a limited company under the patronage of the Queen Dowager Juliane Marie, Crown Prince Frederik and King Christian VII.
The factory is set up at St. Kjøbmagergade 50, and in response to the Queen’s wish, the factory takes three wavy lines, symbolising the Great Belt, the Little Belt and the Sound, as its trademark. The Blue Fluted dinnerware is the first pattern manufactured by the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory. The identification number printed on the bottom of each piece is therefore No. 1.
The Queen Dowager
Juliane Marie
The factory’s finances are in
awretched state as a result of build-
ing up stock instead of selling it.
King Christian VII takes over
financial responsibility. The factory
changes its name to ‘Den Kongelige
Danske Porcelains Fabrik’
(The Royal Danish Porcelain
Manufactory).
To this very day Flora Danica is still moulded and
painted by hand like 230 years ago
The Flora Danica dinner service is named after the great work on botany entitled Flora Danica, which began to appear in Copenhagen in 1761.
According to a contemporary source, the first Flora Danica dinner service was commissioned by Crown Prince Frederik on behalf of King Christian VII of Denmark as a gift for Empress Catherine II (the Great) of Russia. Flora Danica is regarded as one of the most original and inspired products of the European art industry from the golden age of porcelain.
The Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory is privatised. The first female painter is employed and painting in blue
gradually becomes women’s work.
Arnold Krog, artistic director
A young architect, Arnold Krog, is appointed artistic director to revitalise the factory.
Krog’s first task was to breathe new life into the factory’s great original service, Blue Fluted. He developed a new technique for painting under the glaze, which made it possible to depict landscapes and apply other naturalistic decorations. The new porcelain was shown at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889, and in the course of the next few years the underglaze-decorated porcelain made the factory world-famous.
Royal Copenhagen opens shop at
Bond Street, London in 1897
Arnold Krog’s underglaze is awarded the Grand Prix at the World Fair in Paris. The factory makes its international breakthrough and opens shops in a number of major cities – Paris, New York and London
Amagertorv 6, one of Copenhagens oldest
houses, around 1900
The Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory’s shop moves to its pres ent address at Amagertorv 6, a beautiful renaissance building from 1616 and one of Copenhagen’s oldest houses.
Services and individual pieces are created by artists such as Thorkild Olsen, Axel Salto, Gertrud Vasegaard, Erik Magnussen, Henning Koppel and Grethe Meyer. The style is modern, simple and romantic Today Axel Salto’s works reaches high prices at art auctions
The war makes operations difficult at the porcelain
factories owing to shortages of fuel and raw materials.
The war has an impact on the production a long
time after the Liberation.
Royal Copenhagen celebrates its 225th anniversary by launching a new service, Blue Fluted Mega, the creation of the young design student, Karen Kjældgård-Larsen. Blue Fluted Mega is an exciting revitalisation of the factory’s oldest pattern and a refreshing take on the hand-painted tradition. Karen Kjældgård Larsen gave the classic blue fluted pattern a new impact by enlarging selected details of the original design.
The Blue Fluted Mega decoration is based on enlarged fragments of the classic Blue Fluted pattern
Royal Copenhagen launches the Elements dinner service, created by Louise Campbell, one of Denmark’s leading designers.
The design incorporates elements of Royal Copenhagen’s most traditional servicesover three centuries. The shape of the service contains fragments of the Blue Fluted service of 1775, Flora Danica from 1790 and Half Lace from 1885 while the approach to colour is radically different from the traditional blue and white palette of Royal Copenhagen.
In Elements, Louise Campbell
has confronted the heritage of
centuries with the lifestyle
of the new millennium
2010 When Blue Fluted Mega was launched in the year 2000, it tookthe world by storm. The new reinterpretation of the classic Blue Fluted design wrote design
history, and is still sold around the world today. This year Blue Fluted Mega celebrates its 10th anniversary.
Today Royal Copenhagen porcelain
is still hand-painted according to
craftsmanship traditions dating back
235 years.
