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Blue Floral

Collector Plates

The Royal Copenhagen porcelain manufactory, founded under the patronage Queen Juliane Marie in 1775, was one of the first factories outside of Germany to begin regular production of china dinnerware and porcelain figurines.   This was the result of both innovations exported from Meissen and nearly a hundred years of independent experimentation.  A chemist by the name of Frantz Henrich Müller was the first in Denmark to master the formula for hard paste porcelain, and was employed by Royal Copenhagen from its founding.  Like the factory in Meissen, the earliest pieces of Royal Copenhagen porcelain were painted with cobalt blue glaze.  At the time, this was the only known color that could withstand the extremely high temperatures required to achieve the desired hardness of true porcelain in the Chinese style.  Unlike Meissen and other porcelain factories, however, Royal Copenhagen continued to produce china and dinnerware in the traditional "blue and white style," even after methods for employing other colors were discovered.  For this reason, cobalt blue has become the distinctive trademark of Royal Copenhagen porcelain dinnerware. To view Royal Copenhagen porcelain marks, click here.  One of the earliest Royal Copenhagen plate, "Blue Floral," is still in production today and can be found here in our collection.  Remarkably, most pieces of china and dinnerware produced by Royal Copenhagen porcelain are still painted by hand, with elegant brushstrokes that have evolved alongside artistic developments in Denmark and abroad.  Another example of this famous Danish china is the Royal Copenhagen Christmas Plate, first developed in 1895.  These plates are molded from original watercolor paintings and then applied with various shades of blue underglaze before the final firing.  Due to the fragile nature of the molds, only a limited number of each design can be produced each year.  This has made the Royal Copenhagen Christmas Plate, and others produced in the same style, highly treasured by collectors of antique dinnerware.  More...