BOOKS FOR COLLECTORS

With Frontispieces and many Illustrations
Large Crown 8vo, cloth.

CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD PRINTS.
(How to collect and value Old Engravings.)
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON COSTUME.
By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.

CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK.
By E. L. Lowes.

CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA.
By J. F. Blacker.

CHATS ON OLD MINIATURES.
By J. J. Foster, F.S.A.

CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on English China.")
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS.
By A. M. Broadley.

CHATS ON PEWTER.
By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A.

CHATS ON POSTAGE STAMPS.
By Fred. J Melville.

CHATS ON OLD JEWELLERY AND TRINKETS.
By MacIver Percival.

CHATS ON COTTAGE AND FARMHOUSE FURNITURE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on Old Furniture.")
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD COINS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.

CHATS ON OLD COPPER AND BRASS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.

CHATS ON HOUSEHOLD CURIOS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.

CHATS ON OLD SILVER.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS.
By Arthur Davison Ficke.

CHATS ON MILITARY CURIOS.
By Stanley C. Johnson.

CHATS ON OLD CLOCKS.
By Arthur Hayden.

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
NEW YORK: F. A. STOKES COMPANY.

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CHATS ON ROYAL
COPENHAGEN
PORCELAIN

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Chats on
Royal Copenhagen Porcelain

BY
ARTHUR HAYDEN
KNIGHT OF THE DANNEBROG
AUTHOR OF "CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA," "CHATS ON OLD PRINTS," ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE AND 56 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
TOGETHER WITH
ILLUSTRATED TABLES OF MARKS

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE

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First published in 1918

(All rights reserved)

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TO

WILLIAM PETERSEN, Esq.

AS A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION OF HIS PATRIOTISM AND GENEROSITY IN FURTHERING THE INTERESTS OF ART AND STIMULATING ANGLO-DANISH FRIENDSHIP.

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[Pg 9]

PREFACE

"A good wine needs no bush" is an old English proverb, and this is essentially true in regard to the art of the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory. The late M. Louis Solon, in preparing his colossal bibliographic work on Ceramic Literature, called my attention to the curious fact that a small pamphlet (some four and a half by five inches square, of fourteen pages) written by me originally for the Artist magazine in 1902, and reprinted as a guide to the Royal Copenhagen porcelain exhibit at the Wolverhampton Exhibition in 1902, was marked "rare" and being sold to collectors for five shillings. M. Solon, with his usual perspicacity, added: "It looks as though, in its course from East to West, ceramic painting has deserted its old home to take refuge in the North. C'est du Nord aujourd'hui que nous vient la lumière!"

In 1911, Royal Copenhagen Porcelain: Its History and Development from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day was issued by my publisher, who in bringing out this sumptuous monograph fell under the spell of the beauty of Copenhagen art. That volume appealed to connoisseurs and collectors and was welcomed both here, on the Continent, and in America.

[Pg 10]

It has been thought desirable, in view of the limited circulation of that volume, to issue a popular edition, which is here presented in a slightly abridged form with none of the essentials omitted. Many of the illustrations have not found their way into this gallery. But a brave array of pictures is given to convey to the general reader, and to those who have not perused the larger volume, the chief characteristics of Royal Copenhagen porcelain, and indicate reasons why this factory is now regarded as the leading factory in Europe.

How many of the great factories of the world can claim two great epochs in their history? But Copenhagen can do this. The first is the Müller period (overglaze decoration), when the factory assumed its well-known mark, in 1775, of the three blue lines indicating the three waterways of Denmark—the Sound and the Great and Little Belts. The second great period, the Modern Renaissance (underglaze decoration), practically commenced in 1885.

The porcelain of this factory has long been held in high esteem. Admiral Nelson in 1801, when with the British fleet outside Copenhagen, wrote to Lady Hamilton, "I was in hopes to have got off some Copenhagen china to have sent you"; and later, "As I know you have a valuable collection of china, I send you some of the Copenhagen manufacture." The bowl made at the royal factory in memory of the[Pg 11] brave Danes who fell in the battle of Copenhagen is herein illustrated.

The Encyclopædia Britannica (11th Edition), 1911 (article on Ceramics), awards a high place to the Royal Copenhagen Factory, "the productions of which are not only famous all over the world, but have set a new style in porcelain decoration which is being followed at most of the continental factories."

At the present time museums and private collectors in this country and in various parts of the world are acquiring Royal Copenhagen porcelain on account of its artistic character.

Ordinary collectors of porcelain have always been desirous of selecting a subject which has not been exploited. The Worcester vase which to-day brings two thousand guineas at Christie's was once bought when it was new for as many shillings by some person who recognized its beauty. But in regard to old factories, most of the histories have been written to extol their work when the factory had closed down for ever. The lack of contemporary records of English porcelain is particularly noticeable. It is as though the factories attempted to hide their personalities, as indeed they did disguise their productions by trade signs only decipherable by the indefatigable zeal of later generations. They assumed pseudo-Chinese marks or adopted the crossed L's of Sèvres and the crossed swords of Meissen, to the confusion of collectors a hundred years[Pg 12] afterwards. It is therefore with no misgiving that in the present volume modernity receives due consideration. National recognition for the artist potter comes, alas! often too late.

In passing, we may add that there are some wonderful productions being made in England to-day, especially in earthenware, and those who are buying wisely are laying down wine for posterity.

I have to offer my renewed thanks to the various museum authorities, mainly in Scandinavia, and to private collectors and friends who were duly acknowledged in my larger volume as being instrumental in affording me access to data on a new subject.

In that work, although the omission was corrected in the German edition published at Leipsic in 1912, various notes were embodied and remain in the present volume, which were supplied to me by correspondents without any knowledge on my part that they were based on the work of Professor Nyrop of Copenhagen, who has made assiduous research into the history of the old Copenhagen factory, and to whom, therefore, a tribute is in courteous acknowledgment obviously due.

A new chapter has been added to this volume dealing with Copenhagen Art Faience, the character of which ware has claimed recognition from competent critics throughout Europe and in America as having brought a new note into ceramic art.

ARTHUR HAYDEN.

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[Pg 13]

CONTENTS

	PAGE
PREFACE	9
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS	15
CHAPTER

I.	THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE COPENHAGEN FACTORY THE FOURNIER PERIOD. SOFT PASTE PORCELAIN (1760-1766)	19
II.	FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER (1773-1801) QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD (PART I, 1775-1780)	41
III.	FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER (1773-1801)—continued QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD (PART II, 1780-1796)	73
IV.	FIGURE SUBJECTS AND GROUPS (1780-1820)	111
V.	THE FLORA DANICA SERVICE (1790-1802) MADE FOR CATHERINE II, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA	137
VI.	EARLY BLUE-AND-WHITE UNDERGLAZE PAINTED	157
VII.	THE SUCCESSORS OF MÜLLER (1820-1880) THE DECADENCE	177
[Pg 14]VIII.	THE MODERN RENAISSANCE	199
IX.	FIGURE SUBJECTS AND GROUPS—RENAISSANCE PERIOD	263
X.	CRYSTALLINE GLAZES	289
XI.	COPENHAGEN ART FAIENCE	307
XII.	THE FACTORY TO-DAY	333

INDEX

347

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[Pg 15]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lady and Gentleman dancing. Old Copenhagen Figure Group
Frontispiece
	PAGE
Chapter I.—Early History of the Copenhagen Factory.
Groups. Fournier Period (1760-1766). Soft-paste Porcelain	25
Vase. Fournier Period (1760-1766). Soft-paste Porcelain	33
Chapter II.—Frantz Heinrich Müller (Part I, 1775-1780).
Portrait of Frantz Heinrich Müller	41
Vase with medallion portrait of Queen Juliane Marie	45
Vase with medallion portrait of Crown Prince Frederik	49
Tea and Coffee Service	53
Saucer. Eagle and Lamb	57
Saucer. Water-god	61
Coffee Cups. Rose and spray of flowers: Group of cavalry	65
Cup with Frantz Heinrich Müller in his Laboratory	69
Chapter III.—Frantz Heinrich Müller (Part II, 1780-1796).
Sucrier with Cover and Cup	81
Pastille Burner and Cover	89
Octagonal Dish. Man with Hound	93
Tray with oval panel	97
Chapter IV.—Figure Subjects and Groups (1780-1820).
Statuette of a Hero. 1780	115
Two Figures of Sea Horses	119
Figure Group with Cupid	123
Figures. Old Woman; Man playing Flute	127
Figures. Market Woman and Lobster-seller	131
[Pg 16]Figures. Naval and Military Uniform	133
Chapter V.—The Flora Danica Service (1790-1802).
Fish Dish and Drainer	145
Cruet Stand and Tray	151
Chapter VI.—Early Blue-and-white Underglaze Painted.
Group of Underglaze blue painted (Bornholm period)	161
Early Blue-and-white Plates (Danish pattern)	163
Teapot and Tea Caddies	167
Dish and two Plates	169
Chapter VII.—The Successors of Müller (1820-1880).
Bowl. Battle of Copenhagen	181
Cup. Kronborg Castle and Shipping in Sound	185
Plate. Painted with Flower Subject	189
Figure of Mercury, after Thorvaldsen	193
Chapter VIII.—The Modern Renaissance.
Placque. Wild Geese on Ice (Arnold Krog)	203
Placque. Autumnal Scene (Arnold Krog)	207
Placques. Kestrel (V. Th. Fischer); Meadow with Farmhouse (C. F. Liisberg)	211
Placques. Birds (V. Th. Fischer); Cow in meadow (G. Rode)	217
Placque. With Lake Scene (C. F. Liisberg)	221
Placque. Snow Scene with Setting Sun (A. Smidth)	227
Placque. Geese and Landscape (C. F. Liisberg)	231
Vases. With Waterfowl (V. Th. Fischer and C. F. Liisberg)	239
Memorial Commemorative Placque, Ribe Cathedral (A. Krog)	243
Dessert Plate, blue-and-white, with Danish pattern	249
Chapter IX.—Figure Subjects and Groups (Renaissance Period).
Figure. Woman and Cow (Chr. Thomsen)	271
Figure. Boy and Calf (Chr. Thomsen)	275
Figures of Peasants. Child and Old Woman (Chr. Thomsen)	279
Figure Group. From Hans Christian Andersen's Story of[Pg 17] "Princess and Swineherd" (Chr. Thomsen)	285
Chapter X.—Crystalline Glazes.
Figure Group. Polar Bears on an Ice Floe (C. E. Bonnesen and V. Engelhardt)	293
Figure Subject. Frog imbedded in Ice (A. Krog and V. Engelhardt)	297
Vases. (A. Krog and V. Engelhardt)	299
Vases. Crystalline Glaze (V. Engelhardt)	303
Chapter XI.—Copenhagen Art Faience.
Dish with tropical bird (Christian Joachim)	307
Placque with parrot (Christian Joachim)	311
Vase with floral decoration	315
Vase—hexagonal—with floral and arabesque decoration	319
Figures. A Midsummer Night's Dream	323
Figures. Clown, Columbine, and Harlequin	327
Boxes and Vase	331
Chapter XII.—The Factory To-Day.
Courtyard of Factory, showing Turkey with Brood	337
Interior, showing Studios of Lady Artists	341

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CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HISTORY OF
THE COPENHAGEN FACTORY

THE FOURNIER PERIOD
SOFT-PASTE PORCELAIN
(1760-1766)

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[Pg 21]

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE COPENHAGEN FACTORY

THE FOURNIER PERIOD
(1760-1766)

Establishment of porcelain factories in Europe—The German School and the French School—Hard paste—Soft paste—The new ceramic art—The great secret—The secret divulged—The first porcelain in Denmark.

In order to understand the initial stages in the history of the manufacture of porcelain in Denmark, it is necessary to review the peculiar conditions in which china factories existed in the eighteenth century. At the middle of the century there were two great schools, the German and the French. The former made hard or true porcelain according to the formula of Meissen, and the latter made soft or artificial porcelain in the manner of St. Cloud.

Hard Paste.—The impulse of the Western potter had always been to reproduce exactly[Pg 22] and chemically the Oriental porcelain. Until the first decade of the eighteenth century this had not been achieved. The news of the great discovery by Johann Fredrich Böttger, in 1709, of a white translucent porcelain, having all the characteristics of the Chinese ware, ran like a flame throughout Europe. Translucent porcelain may be either what is termed hard paste (pâte dure), containing only natural elements in the composition of the body and the glaze; or soft paste (pâte tendre), where the body is an artificial combination of various materials used as a substitute for the natural earths. All Chinese or true porcelain is of the hard-paste variety. The term pâte tendre really applies to the feeble resistance of this artificial porcelain to the action of a high temperature as compared with that offered by true porcelain, and also to the softness of the glaze, which can be scratched by steel.

The body of the true porcelain is essentially of two elements—the white clay or kaolin, the infusible element which may be said to be the skeleton, and petuntse, the felspathic stone, which is fusible at a high temperature, which may be termed the flesh, and gives transparency to the porcelain. Of the two Chinese names, which have become classical since they were adopted in the dictionary of the French Academy, kaolin is the name of a locality where the best porcelain earth is mined, and petuntse, literally "white briquettes," refers to the shape in which the[Pg 23] finely pulverized porcelain stone is brought to the Chinese potteries, after it has been submitted to the preliminary processes of pounding and decantation.[1]

Soft Paste.—The artificial porcelain, which was difficult of fabrication, was an imitation of the true Chinese porcelain, although its whiteness, its translucency, and its brilliant glaze have all the appearance of true porcelain. Kaolin and petuntse are of little importance in the composition of soft porcelain. Its transparency was obtained by the addition of glass, its plasticity by the use of soapstone, and its glaze by an admixture of silica and lead. Moreover, the composition of artificial porcelain has required researches and combinations much more intricate than those which had led to the discovery of hard porcelain, the latter being produced by two substances already provided by nature.

Imitative porcelain had been made at Florence under the auspices of the Grand Duke of Tuscany as early as from 1568 to 1587, of which fabrique only about thirty pieces are known. France is the most prolific in porcelain factories of the pâte tendre, as it came afterwards to be termed in contradistinction to the pâte dure or true porcelain of Meissen. The factory at St. Cloud lasted from 1695 till 1773. Vincennes was founded in 1740, and was finally transferred to[Pg 24] Sèvres in 1756, which factory stands paramount in its porcelain, known to collectors as vieux Sèvres.

At Nove, near Venice, in 1752, Pasqual Antonibon brought from Meissen a potter, Sigismond Fischer, to construct a furnace for making porcelain in the Saxon style. In 1761 there were three furnaces, one for hard paste ad uso Sassonia, and two for soft paste ad uso Francia.[2]

It will thus be seen that the two schools had begun to run side by side. The crowning point was in 1768, when the Sèvres factory commenced to make hard paste. Both bodies were simultaneously made until 1804, after which the manufacture of soft porcelain at Sèvres was discontinued by M. Brongniart. In 1847, the old style was revived by his successor, M. Edelman (Report on Pottery at the Paris Exhibition by M. Arnoux, 1867).

In general, it may be said that the manufacture of soft porcelain is beset with difficulties and uncertainties. Its artificial composition renders it capricious in the kiln. In connection therefore with the modern manufacture of Sèvres of the old pâte tendre variety, it is interesting to record that in the late eighties the original formulæ of the early potters were used in an attempt to reproduce the old body, but had, after repeated and costly failures, to be abandoned as hopeless.

[Pg 27]

In regard to England, it is interesting to note in passing that the old porcelains so highly prized by collectors are all artificial with the exception of Plymouth (1768-1771), Bristol (1771-1781), followed by the company of Staffordshire potters at New Hall who bought the Bristol factory patents, although Wedgwood in his jasper ware and Staffordshire salt glazed ware are fine stone wares which approximate to true porcelain.

Our soft-paste factories are here set in chronological order: Bow (1745), Chelsea (1745), Derby (1751), Worcester (1751), Lowestoft (1762), Caughley (1772), Pinxton (1795), Coalport (1798), Minton (1798). It should be observed that these, as do all soft-paste porcelains, differ in body in an enormous degree, whereas the true porcelain differs in a minor degree whether it be Canton or Meissen.

It was only for fifty years that the English potters used the capricious body of the glassy soft porcelains then made. Gradually, by experiment, the standard body for artificial porcelain was perfected by the addition of bone-ash, which has been adopted since the late eighteenth century in varying forms by all English potters. It is more related to true porcelain, and is as safe to manufacture as that body, and at a lower heat, but it retains many of the qualities of the soft body. The painted colours melt into the glaze in its final firing and produce that mellow effect so much esteemed by connoisseurs of old porcelain. It is peculiarly English, and stands unique in[Pg 28] having technical assets not possessed by any other porcelain. This is something great to record to the honour of the English potter in his mastery of technique.

The New Ceramic Art.—The eighteenth century, in spite of the wars which shook the kingdoms of Europe to their foundations, showed a singular enthusiasm for the art of the potter. A reference to a table of the factory marks of European porcelain of that period will disclose the fact that most of the leading factories were under the auspices of royal or noble patrons whose arms or monograms were incorporated in the mark of the factory.

Kings, princes, electors, grand dukes, and margraves vied with each other in producing rival ware. The St. Petersburg factory had the cipher of the Emperor Paul. At Weesp, in Holland, Count Gronsveldt-Diepenbroek's factory, the works were handed over to the direction of a Protestant pastor. From Vienna with the mark of the Austrian arms, to La Haye with the design of the stork, the symbol of the city; from the arms of the Archbishop of Mayence and the cross and initials of the Prince Bishop of Fulda, to the design of Lille, the Manufacture Royale de Monseigneur le Dauphin with the crowned dolphin, a bewildering entanglement of royal marks and patrician ciphers is studded on china, to the confusion of collectors, adding zest to the art of the connoisseur.

[Pg 29]

The Great Secret.—The actual discovery of the composition of true porcelain by Böttger is interwoven with romance, and the betrayal of the secret processes of its manufacture at Meissen to the leading factories of Europe is a record filled with stirring incidents of the most piquant character. The story of young Böttger, the alchemist and inventor, is told in full by Professor Ernst Zimmermann, Keeper of the Royal Porcelain Collection at Dresden, Die Erfindung und Frühzeit des Meissner Porzellans, Berlin, 1908. The search for the philosopher's stone to transmute baser metals into gold had fascinated all chemists. Böttger was credited with more knowledge than he possessed, and he hastily quitted Berlin to avoid the too assiduous attentions of the King of Prussia. For years he wandered in Saxony, and finally claimed protection in 1701 from Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony. His life at the laboratory at Meissen, under Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, who was a distinguished scientific scholar, was that of a guarded prisoner with a wonderful secret. Tschirnhaus, who was a good chemist, established a glass furnace and invented an ingenious burning mirror, and had essayed to make porcelain. But on the assumption that it was a vitrification, his results only led him to the production of a milky glass. A specimen of this milch glass is in the Japanese Palace at Dresden.

When Charles XII of Sweden invaded Saxony,[Pg 30] Böttger and his workmen were hurried off to the impregnable fortress of Königstein, where a laboratory was erected. A year later he was back at Meissen conducting experiments and cheerfully exhorting the workmen. In 1709 he produced his true hard porcelain from natural earth obtained from Aue, near Schneeberg.

The most elaborate precautions were taken at Meissen to prevent the secret becoming known. The earth was delivered in sealed casks. It was in vain that an oath was exacted from each workman and written on the walls—"Silence until death" (Geheim bis ins grab). The punishment for betrayal was incarceration as a State prisoner in the fortress of Königsberg for life. The terrible silent conditions of the labour produced a longing on the part of the immured workmen to escape. And escape they did.

The Secret divulged.—In 1718, the year previous to Böttger's death Stolzel, the chief workman at Meissen, made his way to Vienna and proceeded to establish, under the direction of a Belgian named Claude Du Pasquier, a manufactory of hard porcelain. The factory was acquired for the State by the Empress Maria Theresa in 1744.

From Vienna a workman named Ringler carried the secret far and wide. His name is linked with the founding of several factories—at Höchst in 1740, at Frankenthal in 1754, where he became director, at Nymphenberg in 1756, where his[Pg 31] aid was invoked, at Ludwigsberg (in Würtemberg) in 1758, and at Zurich in 1759.

The workmen of Höchst, in their turn, further divulged the secret. Bengraf, in 1750, carried the process to Fürstenberg, the factory under the patronage of the Duke of Brunswick.

In 1744 an imperial china factory was established at St. Petersburg by the Empress Elizabeth Petrowna, who employed workmen from Meissen, and in 1765, under the patronage of the Empress Catherine II, the works were enlarged.

There were two methods of obtaining the great secret of Meissen—by stealth and by experiment; most of the factories employed the former means. The attempts to arrive at the hard paste by experiment resulted in the establishment of many soft-paste factories. One remarkable instance of indefatigable industry is that of the chemist Pott, in the employ of the King of Prussia at Berlin, who endeavoured honestly to arrive at the nature of the composition of the Meissen body. He is credited with having made no fewer than thirty thousand experiments, and in so doing he contributed largely to the modern chemical knowledge of the effect of high temperatures on minerals.[3]

It is thus seen how great was the discovery of Böttger, of Meissen, and how far-reaching were the results of the manufacture of true porcelain in Saxony. A wild burst of enthusiasm[Pg 32] followed which has been rarely equalled. Soldier-princes engaged in the wars which were waged in the German States turned aside to indulge in speculation concerning the new art. In 1717 about a hundred and fifty pieces of fine porcelain, many of them old Oriental, now at the Japanese Palace at Dresden, were acquired by Augustus the Strong of Saxony from the King of Prussia in exchange for a regiment of dragoons, without uniforms, horses, or arms.

When the vigilant Frederick the Great commenced the Seven Years' War, and on a sudden filled the electorate of Saxony with sixty thousand Prussian troops, Dresden was taken. It was in vain that the Queen of Poland, daughter of an emperor and mother-in-law of a dauphin, placed the secret State documents in her bedroom to avoid seizure. They were too valuable to Frederick, who had them forcibly removed, and by publishing them proved that he was to be assailed at once by Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and the Germanic body.

The factory of Meissen was depleted of material and models, and he transported artists and workmen to Berlin to found his factory there. Five hundred persons were engaged at this new factory, and in order to win commercial success he executed a master-stroke by framing a decree that all Jews in his kingdom must produce a voucher from the director of the factory that they had purchased a certain amount of the royal porcelain before[Pg 35] permission would be granted to enable them to marry.

It is such human touches as these, significant in their piquancy, which give exceptional interest to the porcelain of the old days produced in conditions of no little difficulty. Under Court patronage, beset by espionage and hedged about by intrigue, the secret of one factory rapidly found its way across the frontier to the neighbouring State. The fortunes of potters have not lain in smooth places, and fate has been as capricious as the fire of the furnace. In eighteenth-century days the furore of mad dilettantism pursued them relentlessly. Royal amateurs more often than not asked them to make bricks without straw, and there was still in the air the lingering suspicion that the furnace might yield up the secret of the philosopher's stone and fill the State treasury to the full.

The First Porcelain in Denmark.—It is not difficult to imagine the situation. King Frederik V determined to found a porcelain factory of his own. His queen consort was Louise, daughter of George II, who died in 1751, eight years after her marriage. His second wife was Juliane Marie, of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

Faience was made at various factories in Denmark, and it is more than conjectural that various native attempts were made to produce porcelain. The royal factory, which the king built near the Blue Tower at Christianshavn, with the aid[Pg 36] of foreign workmen whom he had induced to enter his service, commenced to make various experiments. Mehlhorn was one of the alien potters brought from Saxony, but apparently, whether from paucity of natural earths or owing to faulty kilns, nothing of any moment resulted until Louis Fournier, a Frenchman (1760-1766), was induced to take charge of the factory. During what is known as the Fournier period the French director had the assistance of Danish artists, including Johannes Wiedewelt the sculptor. His contemporaries speak of the services he designed. Doubtless many of them were intended as presents to foreign princes and ambassadors, and found their way into royal and foreign cabinets. Although only about twenty pieces of the Fournier period are known, it is not impossible that careful research may discover that some of the early pieces attributed to Fürstenberg may really belong to Fournier of Copenhagen. Obviously, on account of their rarity they are of great value and of exceptional interest as being the first creations of the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory. The identification should be rendered the easier when it is borne in mind that the early Copenhagen porcelain of the Fournier period is soft paste, whereas the Fürstenberg porcelain is hard paste. The mark[Pg 37] F with the figure 5 stands for Frederik V and not for Fournier. The coincidence of the initial letter is like the W in Worcester porcelain of the Dr. Wall period.

The early creations of the Copenhagen factory were porcelain, it is true, but they are not the hard or true porcelain of Meissen. They are the soft paste of the same nature as the pâte tendre of contemporary Sèvres. They did not attain the high ideal contemplated by Frederik V when he set out to equal the Saxon porcelain and the other hard-paste porcelains of Germany, but they arrived at a dignity and a grace of style which are worthy of regard. As first attempts they are of surprising beauty, and the few specimens remaining arouse curiosity as to what masterpieces of this short period have been lost to posterity.

The modelling, the design, and the colouring of such early examples as these of a new factory are naturally dependent on prototypes. It was a great thing to produce porcelain at all, consequently the style is found to be derivative. A fine Sèvres jar with cover, in date 1761, at the Sèvres Museum, has a family likeness to the Fournier cups with covers in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Although these latter have the same type of decoration with a white panel on a dark ground, it will be seen that the Sèvres example exhibits the sure mastery of technique of an older factory. The painting is richer and of more detail, with birds of tropical plumage.[Pg 38] The Fournier examples, with handles, were evidently designed for use. There are five of these covered custard cups at Rosenborg Castle, three having green and two having blue grounds; we illustrate an example. At the Kunstindustri Museum at Copenhagen there are two custard cups and covers of similar form—one with red decoration; and the other with red and green, and floral decoration painted in colours. These are both marked F5 in blue.

It is interesting to note, in the archives of the Sèvres factory, that Louis XV sent, in 1758, to the King of Denmark a service of green, decorated with figures, flowers, and birds, which cost 30,000 livres. Here, at hand, was a fine Sèvres service as model for Fournier, and the resemblance of soft-paste Copenhagen porcelain to Sèvres is not difficult to understand.

In the illustration of the Oval Dish and Cover standing beside the cup with handle, the ware is coarser and in paste and colouring is not unlike some of the earlier specimens of Bow china. These and the other illustration of Sucrier with Cover and Dish are from the famous collection at Rosenborg Castle. The sucrier and cover are decorated with scale pattern; portions of the outer rim are moulded in relief and the floral decoration is in natural colours.

A Teapot from a tea service at the National Museum at Stockholm exhibits a similar style in this experimental period. The colours of the[Pg 39] teapot, cream jug, and cups and saucers are emerald green borders with gilding. The flowers are painted in natural colours. They bear the Fournier mark F5 in gold. The service was a present to King Charles XV of Sweden from the Countess Dannemand.

In the collection of Count Moltke of Bregentved are four fine Vases of this period. They exhibit the rococo style then prevalent and are remarkable works emanating from the little royal factory of Copenhagen during the first years of its existence. On one of these vases is a panel decorated with a group of Cupids supporting a shield upon which is inscribed the mark used by Fournier in the period of Frederik V.

All these soft-paste Copenhagen examples are of great rarity. The Fournier period was of short duration. The death of Frederik V, in 1766, removed its royal patron. The winter of 1766-7 brought great distress in Copenhagen, and the masked balls and masquerades and the luxurious riot of the Court of the young king Christian VII at Christianborg inflamed public opinion against the new monarch.

It is obvious that at such a juncture the royal factory, which in its struggling infancy needed enthusiastic patronage, suffered from neglect so that it is not surprising to find that its days were numbered, and after a vain struggle it finally ceased work. Louis Fournier returned to France, and the first period of Copenhagen porcelain came to an end.

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CHAPTER II

FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER
(1773-1801)

QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD
PART I (1775-1780)

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CHRONOLOGY

1732. Frantz Heinrich Müller born, 17th November.

1765. Müller solicits support for the establishment of a porcelain factory.

1773. Frantz Heinrich Müller presents his first pieces of hard-fired transparent porcelain to Christian VII. The first hard porcelain made in Denmark.

1775. A company formed, of which the members of the Royal Family held shares. The Dowager Queen Juliane Marie suggests the factory mark of the three blue lines, symbolizing the three waterways of Denmark, which mark was adopted and has been continuously used since that date.

1779. The factory taken over by the king becomes the Royal Porcelain Manufactory.

1780. The first retail depot opened in Copenhagen.

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[Pg 43]

CHAPTER II

FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER
(1773-1801)

QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD
Part I (1775-1780)

The Court of the young king Christian VII—A great Court scandal—A Coup d'Etat—The inception of the Porcelain Factory—The origin of the mark of the Three Blue Lines—Müller's technique—Müller's range of subjects.

At the death of King Frederik V, in January 1766, and the succession of Christian VII, then seventeen years of age, the royal china factory at the Blue Tower fell upon evil days. When Frantz Heinrich Müller, "only after numerous unsuccessful attempts," presented his first three pieces of hard-fired transparent porcelain to the young king in September 1773, there were matters of much graver moment occupying public attention. It was almost in vain that Müller had built new kilns differing from those in which soft porcelain was made, travelled to Bornholm to find suitable clay, and experimented with glazes.

[Pg 44]

In the six years since the death of Frederik, Denmark had passed through one of the most tragical periods of her history. Christian VII, a manikin prince, became the sport of fate. Caroline Matilda, the sister of George III of England, at the early age of fifteen, became his queen. Himself the son of the beloved Louise, daughter of George II, great hopes were entertained by the Danish people of the alliance. But perverse circumstances—with the grim figure of the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie in the background—beset the path of the young couple.

The Court at Christianborg, an echo of Versailles, filled with painted men and women who affected to despise Danish customs and even the Danish tongue, was a hot-bed of intrigue. Christian threw etiquette to the winds in his sanctum, surrounded by boon companions. The coterie had all the abandon of Sans Souci without the master-mind of Frederick of Prussia and the wit and satire of that monarch's confidantes. Madame de Plessen, lady-in-waiting, stern precisian in etiquette, devoted to her young mistress, but heedlessly tactless, made a breach between the king and queen. The bride of a year retired to the company of staid dowagers and played chess. The petulance and malicious tricks of the king early showed that, unable to govern himself, he was unable to govern others. Madame de Plessen was dismissed by the king and ordered to leave Denmark. Christian's dissipation was rapidly[Pg 47] becoming a public scandal. The "Northern Rogue" was the mild epithet of the English populace, who cheered the little king when he came to St. James's. Echoes of his wild life reached Matilda at Copenhagen.

A Great Court Scandal.—At this juncture a remarkable man, John Frederick Struensee, the king's physician, a German, possessed of extraordinary talents, gradually began to assume control of State affairs. The tragic story is too intricate to refer to here in more than a cursory manner. Queen Matilda's attachment to Struensee is as romantic as that of Mary Queen of Scots for Rizzio. An English author has termed her "A Queen of Tears."[4] It is Madame de Genlis who affirms that "men summon physicians only when they suffer, women when they are merely afflicted with ennui." In six years this man became the most powerful in Denmark. An amazing state of things followed. The envoys of the various Powers became alarmed at the situation. Drastic reforms followed one another in quick succession, inaugurated by Struensee, but promulgated in the king's name. Undoubtedly Struensee had a genius for government had he tempered his reforms with discretion. He was saturated with German philosophy, and based his ethics on Voltaire and the sordid sentiment of Rousseau. "It is the path[Pg 48] of the passions that has conducted me to philosophy," writes Jean-Jacques, and Struensee might well have applauded that sentiment. He invented a new office and became "Master of Requests" and virtually Prime Minister. But he offended too many people's interests and became the object of hatred. He galled the old nobility by his despotic power, and the Dowager-Queen Juliane Marie, from her seclusion at Fredensborg, filled the Court with spies. The weak-minded king, now showing signs of mental aberration, signed everything put before him, and the young Queen Matilda was under the domination of Struensee, who openly treated her with disrespect.

In 1771 there was great distress in the country and discontent was growing. Scurrilous letters fell at the feet of Struensee and Matilda on their walks at Hirscholm, and placards of a threatening nature were affixed to the walls of the royal palaces. Struensee had flouted the army by attempting to disband the Guards. The mutterings of disaffection became more audible. His effrontery deserted him. He grew craven-hearted in face of grave dangers. His failure stamps him as a colossal adventurer at bottom; had he been of sterner stuff he might have become a hero.

A Coup d'Etat.—The hour for striking a blow was at hand, and Queen Juliane Marie and her son Frederik, with a band of conspirators, at a masked ball on the night of January 16, 1772, seized the person of the king, together with Matilda;[Pg 51] the latter was hurried off to the fortress of Kronborg, and Struensee and Brandt, his coadjutor, were imprisoned in the citadel at Copenhagen.

The trial and divorce of Matilda and the beheading of Struensee and Brandt is a poignant story. The name of the unfortunate young queen was ordered to be officially omitted from the prayer-book at a time when she surely stood most in need of prayer. Juliane Marie pursued Matilda with vindictiveness, and her malevolence nearly precipitated Denmark in a war with England. It was intended that Matilda should be imprisoned in a remote fortress in Jutland. The British Minister, Sir Robert Murray Keith, informed the Danish Government that unless Queen Matilda was released he would present his letters of recall and war would be declared. The Danish Minister in London wrote in great haste to say that a fleet was fitting out. It was only then that Queen Juliane Marie released her hold of Matilda and allowed her to depart to Celle, in the State of Hanover, where she died in 1775 in her twenty-third year.

Here, then, was the state of affairs when Müller was experimenting with his clays, his glazes, and his colours. In 1771 a hundred and fifty weavers set out on foot from Copenhagen to Hirscholm, in days of panic, to complain that they were starving because the royal silk factory was closed. It was an ill-starred venture to attempt the establishment of a new porcelain factory, but in[Pg 52] face of reverses of fortune and undeterred by lack of support, Müller by his immense energy fired into being the great porcelain factory of Copenhagen. To Müller the Dane belongs the honour of founding the little factory which strove to achieve results no less beautiful than Meissen, Berlin, or Sèvres. Begun in a spirit of worthy emulation, the Copenhagen factory shortly began to develop an original and national style, in spite of the fact that it worked in the early days on foreign suggestion and employed foreign artists.

The Inception of the Porcelain Factory.—Frantz Heinrich Müller was born on the 17th of November 1732. When an apprentice, from the age of fifteen, at the Kong Salomon's Pharmacy at Copenhagen, he devoted his leisure to the study of chemistry, botany, mineralogy, and metallurgy. He was appointed as Guardian of the Mint at the Bank of Copenhagen in his twenty-eighth year, and held the post from 1760 to 1767. As early as 1765 he had the object in view of establishing a porcelain factory; together with a painter named Richter we find him soliciting support. In common with his contemporaries he cast eager eyes on foreign porcelain. He wandered for three years on the Continent under an assumed name, and the unravelling of this period of his career would throw much light on his researches.

Müller, on his secret mission in Germany, found that the china factories of Fürstenberg, Meissen,[Pg 55] and Berlin were closed to him. But he threw his whole life and energy into his work. He outlived the opposition of the Society of Apothecaries, who objected to a licence being granted him as a druggist and dispenser. But in face of the objection the College of Medicine found the applicant "a very capable, learned, and experienced man, not only in Pharmacy, but also in Chemistry, Assaying, and Natural History." With characteristic energy he passed the pharmaceutical examination at the age of forty-one; already he had shown originality and inventiveness by making several discoveries in colours and in dyeing. But with all his virility he found financial success no easy matter at such a disturbed period. He endeavoured to form a company for the manufacture of Danish porcelain. To his chagrin, only one share was sold.

At the outset there was little promise that his untiring efforts would win the remotest recognition from his countrymen. It seemed imminent that the whole enterprise would have to be abandoned. Happily, Privy Chancellor Holm, the private secretary to the Dowager-Queen Juliane Marie, saw possibilities in the venture. To revive the old factory which Fournier had vacated was an opportunity not to be missed. If it proved a success, it would redound to the credit of the queen and add lustre to the new régime just commenced under the sway of Juliane Marie, with Guldberg as the power behind the throne.[Pg 56] Christian VII had simply passed as a signer of documents into the keeping of another set of masters.

Of the shares, most of them in the new factory were held by members of the royal family and one by Müller himself. The directors were Holm; Suhm, the historian; General Eickstedt, one of the conspirators who took a leading part in the arrest at the masked ball; and Guldberg, who had a finger in every pie. On the 13th of March 1775 the company obtained the monopoly of the manufacture of porcelain in all the dominions of the King of Denmark, in spite of the opposition of the Board of Trade.

The Origin of the Mark of the Three Blue Lines.—The first meeting of the company was held on the 1st of May 1775. It was decided that the trade-mark of the factory, according to the proposal of Queen Juliane Marie, should be three wavy lines, always marked in blue, representing Denmark's three waterways—Oresund, and the two belts: Storebelt, between Sjaelland and Fyen; Lillebelt, between Fyen and Jutland. With this trade-mark of the three blue lines the Copenhagen factory (Den Danske Porcellænsfabrik) took its place beside the older factories on the Continent, and to this day, a hundred and forty-three years afterwards, this same mark appears on all porcelain emanating from the Royal Copenhagen Factory.

Although Müller only had one share of the subscribed capital, there was only one controlling[Pg 59] brain. He worked the enterprise single-handedly. It was "par ses seules lumières," to quote a contemporary French account of the factory, that he had succeeded in producing the beautiful porcelain which won early recognition from connoisseurs. But the Court were not eager to encourage ambition. After the late startling exhibition of a now defunct medico, whose head still stuck on a pole on Gallows Hill, genius must needs be rigorously safeguarded. In common, therefore, with his artisans, Müller was required to sign a contract binding him to remain in the employ of the Court factory, and to keep secret all that he knew of the manufacture of porcelain—his own invention. His official position was only that of works manager.

Genius, that indomitable and unquenchable spirit which overrides all obstacles, found Müller, with his crowd of untried soldier workmen and crude apprentices, ceaselessly working in the factory from five in the morning till seven in the evening, and often superintending the firing all night. In 1776 three workmen were inveigled from Meissen to the Court factory at Copenhagen, but only two out of the three showed any ability. Their supercilious manners, together with their higher wages, brought trouble in the factory among the other workmen, and Müller expelled them by force. But he made one appointment which undoubtedly was of benefit to the factory; by contributing part of the salary himself, he[Pg 60] brought A. C. Luplau from the Fürstenberg factory, who became modelling master. As early as 1776 the name of Baÿer appears as a painter in colours, as opposed to the painters in underglaze blue. It was Baÿer who afterwards was entrusted with the painting of the celebrated Flora Danica service, begun in 1790. Others whose names are found in the early records are Hans Clio and the portrait painters, Camrath and Ondrup.

The first four years of the factory were very critical. Notwithstanding the close application of Müller, the financial position came to a serious crisis in 1779. There seemed every likelihood that the factory would follow in the steps of Fournier and close its doors. How the royal shareholders adjusted matters is not known, nor what became of Müller's one share in the enterprise. The debts were paid in the king's name, and the factory was taken over by the State and became the Royal Porcelain Manufactory (Den Kongelige Porcellænsfabrik), which name it bears at the present day. In March 1780 a retail business was opened at Copenhagen in connection with the factory. Müller was made inspector of the factory and the title of Councillor of Justice was conferred upon him.

Dated specimens have an exceptional interest in proving that no inconsiderable progress had at that time been made in the artistic development of the factory. Already in form and in decoration[Pg 63] there was something distinctive in Müller's ware. Such pieces show indisputably that great days were at hand, if indeed in these first few years success had not already been achieved in training artists and craftsmen in the new industry.

Müller's Technique.—Danish ceramic art is profoundly indebted to Müller for his pioneer work. He was a giant in days when pigmies controlled the destinies. His unflagging energy, his practical experiments, and his original and inventive genius impelled him to implant national characteristics in the Royal Copenhagen porcelain which have never departed from the ware of this factory. His first attempts were made with kaolin which he obtained from the island of Bornholm. He soon realized that this did not fulfil all the conditions necessary for a fine body. It was of a greyish-blue tint, and was liable to lose its shape in firing. In appearance it is not very transparent and is somewhat coarse, like some of the old Japanese porcelain. Of this Bornholm period mention will be made later in dealing with the early examples of blue underglaze painted ware, which is a special variety by itself, running concurrently with the overglaze painted ware which Müller brought in his best period to unexampled perfection.

He prepared the glazes himself, determined the correct method of firing, and made the colours used at the factory. The blue that he invented is perfect, and is to be found on the early specimens[Pg 64] of underglaze painted porcelain for domestic use. The green and the purple found in the early Müller period were his own discovery and of exceptional quality in tone. He was a master of technique, and perfected a new body which he called "virgin paste." This is of a dazzling white, and Müller's glaze is transparent and smooth as polished crystal. The tint is that of the green of the sea, and without doubt its technical excellence lends great beauty to the porcelain of this period. Considering the primitive methods of working and the impure materials then available, the perfection and beauty of the results claim profound admiration from the connoisseur. Even with the aid of modern technology and chemistry it has not yet been found possible to equal the technique of Müller's best period.

The year 1780, the date when the first opening of the retail business took place, was the turning-point in the history of the factory. Müller was acclaimed as a genius by his countrymen. It was proposed that a statue should be erected to his honour—and this in his lifetime. A wave of enthusiasm found an outlet in Latin poems to "the man who had done so much for his king and country." It is exceptional to find such contemporary honour bestowed on a potter. Rarely is a man a prophet in his own country. But happily Müller lived to wear the laurel wreath. "What honour," writes a contemporary, "this industry has brought its founder! I was enraptured[Pg 67] with the things which I saw. How could I have dreamed that these could be made by a Dane and in my native land!"

We catch an insight into Müller's methods from a letter he wrote, when eighty years of age, to Boye, a subsequent director, who had suggested the use of some pieces of new apparatus for the laboratory. Old Müller wrote as follows: "I fail to see the use or necessity of the thermometer, eudiometer, or hydrometer. I have never found it necessary to apply such exact learning in the manufacture of porcelain, and ideas such as these appear to me to be absolutely absurd." While allowance must be made for Müller's advanced age and his hypersensitiveness towards his successors, it is of great interest to speculate upon his point of view. Man of science that he was, his deprecatory regard for these instruments seems to denote that his technique was arrived at by practical rule-of-thumb methods, dependent upon personal exactitude rather than upon formulæ. It is idle to scoff at Müller's conservatism, for science has yet to unravel the secret of the lost art of tempering the Damascene blade and the subtleties of the potter's art of the K'ang Hsi period in the single coloured glazes, la qualité maîtresse de la céramique, the delicacies of the rare peau de pêche, the famille rose, and the famille verte. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century days the methods of Chinese potters were as unscientific as those[Pg 68] defended by Müller, but the results are "not of an age, but for all time." And Müller's results stand the test of intense criticism; they are hitherto inimitable.

Müller's Range of Subjects.—In regard to the periods of the various styles of Müller, with very few data to guide the critic it must be largely a matter of conjecture as to the exact chronological order of their manufacture. It seems to the present writer, in endeavouring to classify the examples, that they naturally fall under the following heads. One class overlaps another in point of time, and although at first, in the experimental period, elaborate artistic creations cannot at that stage have been attempted, it must equally follow that in the middle and later period the simpler and utilitarian forms were still being made concurrently with the finer works of art.

The natural order of development in point of technique would be:—

1. Underglaze painted "mussel" blue-and-white fluted porcelain (pp. 161, 163, 167).
2. Early examples painted in colours overglaze. (See illustrations, pp. 65, 89.)
   • (a) Dishes, plates, tea and coffee services.
   • (b) Vases and ornamental pieces of a minor character.
3. Vases with modelled figures. Figure subjects in colours.
4. Busts, in biscuit.
5. [Pg 71] Elaborate and finely modelled vases and sumptuous services, of which the Flora Danica is the culmination.

It is obvious that in the immature years of a pottery figure subjects would be rarely attempted until such time as the potters were sure of their ground and the technique had been securely established. The highest artistic achievements must necessarily come after the rudiments of the art have been mastered. In regard to figure subjects, the fact that Luplau came to Copenhagen in 1776 with eighteen years' experience from the Fürstenberg factory must be taken into consideration in regard to the appearance, at an earlier stage than usual in the history of a factory, of figures of excellent character. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that the utilitarian blue-and-white services, the national Danish pattern now so well known, were made simultaneously with such fine creations as the elaborate royal services at Rosenborg Castle and elsewhere.

All through the periods from Müller onwards the famous blue-and-white has remained as a standard output; but as a rough generalization, with the reservation admitted in regard to figures, it may be said that the classes above mentioned followed one another in quick succession, until the climax of the Müller period was reached, when the Royal Copenhagen Factory worthily claimed a place beside the great factories in Europe.

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CHAPTER III

FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER
(1773-1801) continued

QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD
PART II (1780-1796)

---

CHRONOLOGY

1780. The first retail depot opened by the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Copenhagen. The china becomes national.

1784. Queen Juliane Marie and her son Frederik, the Hereditary Prince, overthrown.

The Crown Prince Frederik undertakes the government of the country on behalf of his imbecile father, Christian VII.

1790. The importation of foreign porcelain into Denmark prohibited.

The great Flora Danica service for Catherine II, Empress of Russia, commenced.

1796. Queen Juliane Marie dies in retirement.

1801. The battle of Copenhagen.

Müller retires from active work at the factory, then in his sixty-ninth year.

1807. Copenhagen bombarded by the British fleet. Considerable damage done to the Royal Porcelain Factory.

1808. The Crown Prince Frederik ascends the throne as Frederik VI on the death of his father, Christian VII.

The Flora Danica service completed.

1820. Death of Müller. Buried 9th March.

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[Pg 75]

CHAPTER III

FRANTZ HEINRICH MÜLLER
(1773-1801) continued

QUEEN JULIANE MARIE PERIOD
Part II (1780-1796)

The great outburst of activity in 1780—The manufacture of porcelain an assured success—A contemporary account of the factory—A national style created—The diversity of Müller's designs—National sentiment—Table of marks (1775-1801)—List of leading painters and modellers (1773-1801).

[Pg 76]

The masterpieces of Müller come, as do all chefs-d'œuvres, as a surprise. Their gracefulness and poetic charm are captivating. To those who have never had the opportunity to examine a fine collection of old Copenhagen porcelain the discovery of these works of art is a revelation. It has hitherto been supposed that the productions of the little Danish factory were only imitative of the works of the older and better-known German factories. But to the most superficial observer it is at once evident that here is something at once national and beautiful.

During the ten years subsequent to the opening of the retail establishment in Copenhagen, the output of the factory must have been very extensive. It is interesting to find that in 1790 the Custom House regulations relative to the subject are as follows: "Foreign china is prohibited, because the manufactory at Copenhagen, which is at the charge of the State, has been of late productive enough to supply the two kingdoms with an article of luxury, more than of necessity. Painted earthenware is likewise prohibited, from its resemblance to china being so great that many may be induced to purchase it instead of a more valuable article; but plain earthenware, being more generally necessary, is allowed, as is also the porcelain brought over by the East India ships belonging to the Asiatic Company."

A Contemporary Account of the Factory.—The testimony of two foreign critics who visited the factory in 1790 is a valuable record, as they produced authoritative statistical volumes on Northern Europe. Their opinion assists the modern student in forming an estimate of the relative value of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain as compared with that of the great contemporary factories, especially Meissen. In Les Voyages de deux François dans le Nord de l'Europe (the Chevalier Louis de Boisgelin and the Comte Alfonse de Fortia), published by the latter, the trade and manufactures of Denmark receive full treatment.

[Pg 77]

We quote from the English edition, Travels through Denmark and Sweden: to which is prefixed a Journal of a Voyage down the Elbe from Dresden to Hamburgh, including a compendious historical account of the Hanseatic League, by Louis de Boisgelin, Knight of Malta, with views from drawings taken on the spot by Dr. Charles Parry. This was published in two quarto volumes in 1810. The author states that the former volume written by his fellow-traveller is so rare that it is hardly possible to procure a copy "either of the original edition or of the counterfeit one produced in Germany."

The details in regard to the factory as it then existed are very interesting. There were three large and two small ovens; one of these was the first employed by Müller when he produced his hard porcelain. The ovens were of brick. A firing lasted eighteen hours. It took four days to cool. "These ovens are capable of firing eight complete services at once, whereas those of Saxony cannot take in more than three. The fire here is so well distributed that in many of the firings of fine porcelain the loss sustained is scarcely more than ten rix-dollars."

After describing the process of glazing, the writer proceeds to describe the most important operation of all, performed in a room "where there is only one man, who takes an oath to have no communication whatsoever with any other workman. He works a mill by hand in which[Pg 78] he prepares the paste, and mixes the different matters which compose the glaze." Of the mills for grinding there were two. The granite came from Zealand; "the black is of no use for this operation, which is not performed in the same manner as in Saxony, where the matter is mixed without water, but here it is quite the contrary. By the method employed in this country there is as much made in two hours as they can possibly produce in Saxony in twenty-four; besides the advantage of having no occasion for sieves."

A contemporary account such as this by competent observers who had visited other porcelain factories in Europe and came with the definite object of finding out as much as possible, is of supreme importance as a document. It appears that the blue which came from Norway was considered the finest. There was an immense loft for "coffins," or cases, to be stored for a year before being ready for use. These were made from Bornholm clay, and were used in the ovens as "saggers," as the term is in English pottery, to contain the porcelain. "The moulds are made of a kind of plaster which comes from France. This," says the narrative, "is the only foreign article employed in the manufactory."

In regard to the overglaze colours used there are some interesting facts. Yellow is made from pure tin; purple, with tin and gold; dark poppy, with iron; sky-blue, with cobalt; black, with manganese; rose-colour, with gold; and green,[Pg 79] with copper. "These colours never change in firing, but remain precisely as they were first drawn; whereas they spread in many other factories."

Bearing in mind that the travellers were comparing the manufactures of one country with another in their precise records, which excited European interest in regard to their statistic and economic value, the praise of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain makes the more pleasant reading. "The Copenhagen porcelain is less glassy than that of China. The paste of the biscuit is lighter and closer than that of the Saxon porcelain, the white keeps its colour better, and it is easier to wash. In short, the whole of this manufacture is perfectly well understood, and carried on with great spirit and diligence. It has only been established thirteen years, and at the end of four the storehouses were already filled with a variety of articles. We saw some flutes, for which they asked seventy rix-dollars each. These are very just in tune, but too heavy to be played upon conveniently; they are likewise astonishingly brittle. We were also shown vases two and a half feet high most beautifully painted by Camrath."

The writer makes one extraordinary statement, which goes to show that the finest works were made for rich people, and were not seen by the Danish people in general. "The Copenhagen porcelain is very little known even in Denmark;[Pg 80] for the original expenses of a manufacture of this nature are such, that it must necessarily be sold very dear: it is indeed more so at present than the Saxon china; but it is imagined the price will be lowered in a short time."

The number of workmen employed at the factory at the time of this inspection was three hundred, "forty of whom were for the painting part of the business, which we thought but few for that important branch."

In regard to the director, Müller, himself, some trenchant criticisms are made as to the poor recognition the State had given to so great a potter. In other factories there were different directors, one for the body and glaze, another for the ovens and firing, a third for the artistic form, and a fourth for the painting and gilding, all of whom were paid at a high rate. "But here M. Müller, an excellent chemist, acts himself in these various departments, and is very shabbily paid, having only a salary of 500 rix-dollars. He is also the original inventor of this manufacture, and when it is known that he was never out of Copenhagen, and consequently could have had no model to go by, it is inconceivable to what a degree of perfection he has brought it, and that, too, entirely from his own enlightened genius, without the smallest foreign assistance."

Concerning the salary of Müller of 500 rix-dollars per annum, it is noteworthy to observe that at that time the retail price in Copenhagen[Pg 83] of a complete afternoon service, consisting of six chocolate cups with handles, twelve coffee cups, coffee-pot, teapot and dish, sugar dish, tea caddy and cream jug, was 19 rix-dollars 3 marks first quality blue-and-white, and 26 rix-dollars 4 marks painted with natural flowers. Müller's yearly labours were evidently reckoned as only worth a score of such afternoon services. Hence the piquant strictures of the foreign noblemen.

The point raised as to Müller not having had the smallest foreign assistance may be dismissed as somewhat erroneous. There was Anton Carl Luplau, who was at the Fürstenberg factory for eighteen years, and who came to Copenhagen in 1776; Johan Christoph Baÿer, who was born in Nuremberg, and came to Copenhagen in 1768, when he was thirty years old; Peter Heinrich Benjamin Lehmann, who was a native of Hamburg, and came to Copenhagen from the Berlin factory in 1780, and was naturalized in 1781; Carl Fridrich Thomaschefsky, who worked a short time at the factory; and Martin Cadewitz, who served eleven years and died in 1791. But in 1781, of two hundred persons employed at the factory only ten were foreigners.

As to whether Müller ever left Copenhagen the Count de Boisgelin adds a footnote: "According to M. Catteau, this was not the fact; we only repeat what the man told us was the case." The work referred to is Le Tableau des Etats Dannois envisagés sous le Rapport du Mécanisme Social,[Pg 84] par Jean Pierre Catteau, printed in Paris in 1802 in three volumes.

It is rather an interesting point, but the evidence is against de Boisgelin, for Müller not only visited Brunswick when he entered into negotiations with Luplau to enter the Danish service, but at a slightly earlier date he made a tour of the German factories—in an assumed name, as some accounts go. That he made good use of his time is amply borne out by the results he achieved in so short a space of time on his return to his native land.

There is nothing to detract from the originality and inventiveness of his work. The personality of his genius illuminates the work of the factory. He experienced as many reverses of fortune as did Bernard Palissy, and battled against adverse circumstances with no less indomitable spirit. He conquered technical difficulties, and experimented with clays and bodies and glazes and pigments with hardly less assiduity than did Josiah Wedgwood.

A National Style Created.—No art is wholly independent in origin or of sporadic growth. In the early days and the initial stages it must always be derivative. In ceramic art this applies either to form or decoration, often to both. The form and decoration of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain was the basis of the school of Delft faience. The scale pattern and the panel with exotic birds were slavishly adopted at Sèvres[Pg 85] from Oriental prototypes. Similarly the older European factories impressed their styles upon factories of a later growth. The crowd of German factories came under the direct influence of Meissen in design as well as in technique. It is a significant fact that Copenhagen porcelain under Müller's guiding spirit developed an original style from the first establishment of the factory. This achievement should be placed to Müller's credit in determining his position among European potters. He did something more than assimilate the technique of Meissen in his hard paste, and the fact that he was the first man to make real porcelain in Denmark is only a part of the honour due to him. He created what was far more difficult—a national style.

Influences there undoubtedly were bearing on the form and on the style of decoration employed at Copenhagen. Luplau had little technique to learn. He came as a maturely trained modeller from Fürstenberg, which accounts for the fact that busts and statuettes were produced at a much earlier date in the history of the Copenhagen than in a factory having slowly to train its modellers. But undoubtedly a close examination of the porcelain of the Müller period exhibits the fact that there was a fine reticence applied to the form and the decoration which stands out in strong contrast to the extravagances and reckless prodigality of ornament employed by factories with older traditions. The new factory at Copenhagen[Pg 86] was endowed with a sense of beauty from the first. The rococo style prevalent then at Meissen and dominating art is seldom found in old Danish porcelain; now and again its presence is noticeable and indicates that the work is of the early experimental days. But Copenhagen created a characteristic and natural style of its own, not only in the choice of Danish or Norwegian subjects, but in its intense love of nature and of simple forms.

The whole series of fine pot-pourri vases with natural flowers in relief is essentially different from Meissen examples where the vase is overloaded with fancifully modelled flowers and leaves. The graceful form and subdued decoration of Copenhagen stand out in effective contrast.

Moreover, the flowers themselves were evidently copied direct from nature, and are executed with such skill and refinement that they still stand as ideals of technical and artistic perfection.

In regard to the modelling of figures, especially those in costume, the reticence of Copenhagen is noticeable in comparison with the outré cavaliers and dames in crinolines of the Saxon and other factories. The subdued colouring and the simple charm of the Danish figures places them in a gallery of their own. Nor must this be mistaken for insipidity or weakness of design. Judged by the highest canons of art, the quality of such creations indicates complete control and mastery of technique, and art in due subjection.

[Pg 87]

The outburst of strong national intensity, love of nature, breadth of conception, and virility of execution lasted at the most for twenty years. The verse on a plate:—

Enhver sin Sæk til Möllen bærer
Hvor tungt den ham end og besværer:

which may be turned into English:—

Each man to the mill must bear his sack
Although the load may break his back—

was the leading precept of the staff under Müller. All worked together with single-heartedness of purpose, and the result is the admiration of all who love ceramic art, purposeful, and instinct with grace and dignity.

The Diversity of Designs.—The illustrations accompanying this chapter will show the range of subjects executed under the masterly régime of Müller. At first vases and services for royal use were made, but as soon as the retail establishment in 1780 enabled persons outside the royal entourage to purchase the porcelain, the feet of the factory were set on a rock. Similar forms to those embellished with royal ciphers and monograms and portraits were subsequently employed for persons of lesser degree.

The portrait of Müller shows him to have been a keen, virile, determined man, as we know, of endless resources, and possessed of abnormal[Pg 88] energy. In less than twenty years there had been a constant and untiring enthusiasm in order to bring the factory to such perfection that it would be able to compete with the older and larger factories of Meissen, Berlin, and Sèvres. Perhaps this object was not achieved, inasmuch as the little factory did not enter into the lists to win European approval, but it succeeded in developing a national style, and this in spite of the fact that at the early stages it worked on foreign suggestion and employed foreign artists. Owing to the crowd of smaller factories at that date assimilating the technique and copying the designs of Meissen, it has come to be erroneously believed, owing to the looseness of generalization by writers on the subject and the absence of detailed study of Copenhagen porcelain of that period, that the Danish factory was another echo of Meissen or Berlin. The contemporary opinion of the two French counts, men of practised skill in observation and keen critics in regard to comparing the state of technique and conditions of manufacture of one country with another, comes as a complete refutation to the belief that Copenhagen was then in the second rank.

In regard to Müller's technical achievements, they stand to this day as a permanent record of his mastery of his art. The new body which he invented and called "virgin paste" is of a clear dazzling white, and is covered with a glaze transparent and smooth as polished crystal, tinted[Pg 91] with the green of the sea; this glaze enhanced the beauty of the porcelain. Considering the impure materials then available, and the primitive working methods (for instance, fuel used at that time was wood, in poles 10 feet long of pine and fir), the perfection and beauty of the results demand profound admiration. Even with the aid of modern technology and chemistry it has not yet been found possible at the factory to produce porcelain equal in every respect to the old Müller period.

The diverse character of the output was stupendous. It was rich in design, varied and original in invention, virile in modelling, and national in spirit. The beautiful body invented by Müller had its decoration with his perfected overglaze colours, green and blue and purple. In regard to gilding, the artistic ideal seems to have been attained. It is not possible to convey as illustrations in this volume the extraordinary variety and beauty exhibited in this field. In the cups and saucers herein illustrated, the fine quality of the designs is lost in translation, but these borders of deep blue enriched with gilded designs of the most exquisite character are something to marvel at in connection with the work of the Müller period.

The creations of the factory cover a wide range. The versatility of the modellers and the artists is pronouncedly marked. It bespeaks a great and prolific period when ideas were not lacking.[Pg 92] Evidently there was no great searching after novelty, the gold was not beaten thin, apparently there was a profusion of intellectual force behind the factory. The difference is noticeable as soon as the great period is passed, when one falls on barren ways and thinly eked out inventions, the long years of the dreary twilight.

The love of landscape especially appealed to Copenhagen. The colours of the ceramic artist have limitations peculiarly their own. Atmosphere is rare in overglaze painting. There is a tendency to prettiness and an absence of breadth. But with pigments so refractory there are instances of work surprisingly powerful. Single colour scenes fare best, and there is one example in purple, poor enough medium, which has qualities almost suggesting the strength of a Dutch etching, as shown on a cup and saucer in the Dansk Folke Museum. The picturesque in colour finds its exposition in two octagonal dishes with sporting subjects. The one shows a man with a hound (illustrated, p. 93), and the other a man with a red coat engaged in the pastime of hawking.

Vases with portraits secured their patrons. There is one at the Kunstindustri Museum at Bergen; with the portrait of G. W. Rabener, born at Leipsic in 1714 and died in 1771, the friend of Klopstock, and the good-humoured satirist of German bourgeois society.

Apart from colour and decoration, there is the fine modelling. The symmetry of the more important[Pg 95] vases, instinct with decorative qualities of the highest order, having ornament in relief, moulded garlands, gay Cupids, or mask handles of some wood-god, is always paramount. Rarely is there a false note.

To form and the mastery of the difficulties and the due observance of the technique of the potter, it is necessary to devote another chapter in which the illustrations convey sufficient evidence to show that projecting limbs and fantastic shapes more suitable to the metal-worker were eschewed at Copenhagen. The essentials of ceramics were never lost sight of by the band of modellers working under Müller.

National Sentiment.—There is a vein of sentiment, very pleasing and very piquant, running through much of the work of this period. It is the under-note of the potter, who, as other potters of other nations have before him, desired to convey a written message as well as the message in line, in colour, and in beauty of form that he set before his generation. Centuries before Müller, the Chinese potter revelled in his inscriptions. Potters the world over apparently are poets. On an old Chinese porcelain vase painted in blue, with a garden scene by moonlight, the following inscription in Chinese is found:—

"Heaven and earth are the associates of creation, as light and darkness are the passing guests of a hundred generations. Fleeting life is like a dream; how long do we enjoy it? It was[Pg 96] this knowledge that made men in the old days trim the midnight lamp. And now Yang Chun invites us with smoke to illuminate the world with literature, to associate the fragrant gardens of the peach and the plum, and to talk of happiness. All graciously join me, and as they chant and sing, I alone am ashamed; they become vivacious, I in solitude rejoice. With loud talk they grow merry; a scholar's feast is spread, and sitting amid the flowers we pass the goblet quickly and drink till we are drunken. When the moon is not in its splendour, how can one expatiate on its ecstasy? But if my verses are not perfect I am fined the customary gold and the embarrassing wine."

Here is the Chinese potter—almost Viking-like in his song of the wine-cup in place of the wassail-bowl. Or shall it be the Persian astronomer-poet Omar Khayyám with his—

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

The Staffordshire potters to a man loved a rhymed couplet on a jug or mug or punch-bowl, and their crude efforts amuse the latter-day collector. Their subjects were varied in character—loyalty, naval victories, courtship, and conviviality, with a smack of religion, as, for instance:—

Drink to live and live to die
That you may live eternally.

[Pg 97]

There are many pretty sentiments found on Müller's ware. We have already quoted one (p. 87), and there are many mottoes inscribed in Danish on the porcelain of his period. There is the long inscription on the cup with his portrait (see p. 69), and there are others which we have translated as follows:—

Art bends nature to herself that clay
By magic is transformed to gold alway;

and an inscription on another example, translated runs:—

Long live the King, and glorious be his reign;
Long live ourselves to drink this toast again.

In the collection at Rosenborg Castle there is a cup and saucer upon which the letter F is painted in forget-me-nots. It is dated November 22, 1797, with this inscription:—

Uforglemmelige ungdomsaar for mig!
(Years of youth, unforgettable for me!)

[Pg 100]

We wonder for whom this initial F stands. The permanently abiding sentiment enshrined behind the glass case is to-day as fresh as the forget-me-nots. What romance lies hidden in these four Danish words burnt into the clay? But the records are silent, and F the giver or the receiver is turned into dust, while the potter's clay stands to symbolize an old-world story of the days when youthful ambitions and dreams lit up the memory.

TABLE OF MARKS[5]

Found on Royal Copenhagen porcelain with decoration painted overglaze of the Frantz Heinrich Müller period (1775-1801).

These signatures and initials of painters and modellers, either painted or incised, are found in conjunction with the usual factory mark of the three blue lines.

General

The usual Factory Mark, in blue, found alone or in addition to painter's or modeller's signature or initials.

This mark was adopted at the suggestion of Queen Juliane Marie in 1775, and symbolizes the three waterways of Denmark—the Sound, and the Great and Little Belts.

This mark has been used on all porcelain made at the Royal Copenhagen Factory, both with overglaze and underglaze painted decoration, since that date.

[Pg 101]

N.B.—From 1773-1775 the porcelain of the Copenhagen factory made by Müller bore no mark.

Signature of Anton Carl Luplau, who came to Copenhagen in 1776, and died in 1795.

A Bust of Queen Juliane Marie at Rosenborg Castle bears this signature on base:—

Signature of Hans Clio, who was working at the factory prior to 1779, and who died in 1786.

Peter Heinrich Benjamin Lehmann. Came to the factory in 1780. Died 1808. Painter of landscapes, figures, and birds.

Signature of Hans Christopher Ondrup (1779-1787). Sometimes signed Ondrup mahlt (Ondrup painted it). Painted signature frequently in red.

[Pg 102]

This signature in full has been traced from an example in the collection of Count Chr. Danneskjold-Samsöe, at Gissenfeldt.

Signature of Andreas Hald (1781-1797), modeller and sculptor. Frequently marked his pieces in full or with initials AH incised. In some instances his initials are painted in blue on side of base, as in Figure of Flute Player (illustrated, p. 127).

Jesper Johansen Holm. Born 1747. Member of Royal Academy. Incised mark, HOLM 1780 on Statuette at National Museum, Stockholm.[Pg 103] (See illustration, p. 115.) I HOLM 1781 incised marked on a Bust of Prince Frederik at Kunstindustri Museum, Copenhagen.

Signature of Johan Christoph Baÿer. Came to Copenhagen in 1768. Died 1812. Landscape painter, followed the style of Johann Christoph Dietsche, of Nuremberg (1710-1769). Engaged on painting the flowers in the Flora Danica service.

The mark of Jacob Schmidt, modeller and sculptor. He was, in 1779, a pupil at the factory in his fourteenth year. He died in 1807. Many of his pieces have his initials incised. An example[Pg 104] at the Dansk Folke Museum, Copenhagen, has this mark together with the three lines incised, which is an exceedingly rare mark.

Incised mark on a cream cup and cover at the Kunstindustri Museum, Copenhagen, decorated with purple flowers and rococo ornamentation, gilded, and having scale-pattern in red. This mark (signifying that the piece belongs to the Christian VII era) is unusual. This may be conjectured to be a specimen made by Müller prior to 1775, that is, before the adoption of the mark of the three blue lines.

The incised mark of Hans Meehl, who was a modeller at the factory in 1791. This mark is found on a polychrome Figure of a Man in national costume (Norsk Bjergmund), at the Kunstindustri Museum, Copenhagen.

This mark is incised on the base of a polychrome figure of a Woman with Hens at the Kunstindustri Museum, Copenhagen.

[Pg 105]

LIST OF LEADING PAINTERS AND MODELLERS[6]

Who worked at the Royal factory under the Direction of Frantz Heinrich Müller (1773-1801).

Anton Carl Luplau. 1776-1795.

Was at the Fürstenberg factory for eighteen years. Müller visited Luplau at Brunswick in 1776, and on November 14th an agreement was signed, and Luplau joined the Copenhagen factory as modelling-master. He died in 1795. He was a perfect craftsman. Many of his pieces were signed, e.g. the Bust of Queen Juliane Marie. Luplau made many of the models for the Flora Danica service, and executed 20 Norwegian types after the well-known sandstone figures at Fredensborg.

Claus Tvede. 1775-1783.

Sculptor and modeller at the factory. He is supposed to have made the Statuette of the Hereditary Prince Frederik after the design by Ludovico Grossi, which piece bears the initials of the modeller Andreas Hald.

Johan Christoph Baÿer. 1776-1812.

Born in Nuremberg 1738. Came to Denmark in 1768. Agreement signed on November[Pg 106] 16, 1776, when he entered the service of the factory. He died in his seventy-fifth year, in 1812. Landscape painter; followed the style of Johann Christoph Dietsche, Nuremberg landscape painter (1710-1769). Executed drawings for Holmskjold's book on Danish Fungi. Entrusted with the work of flower painting on the Flora Danica service.

Hans Clio. Working before 1779. Died in 1786.

Painter. Appointed drawing-master to train the pupils at the factory. His signature appears on some of the porcelain with landscapes painted by him.

Lars Hansen. 1777-1800.

Born in 1739. In 1777 he is noted as being one of the best painters in blue underglaze ware. He died in 1800.

Jacob Schmidt. 1779-1807.

Born in 1764. Modeller and sculptor. At factory in 1779 as pupil in modelling in his fourteenth year. Many of his pieces are marked with his initials incised.

Hans Christoph Ondrup. 1779-1787.

Painter. His signature, or his initials, painted in red, is found on several pieces.

[Pg 107]

Peter Heinrich Benjamin Lehmann. 1780-1808.

Born in 1752 at Hamburg. Came to the factory from Berlin in 1780. Was naturalized in 1781 and died in 1808. He was a painter of landscapes, figures, and birds.

G. Kalleberg. 1780-1810.

Modeller of figures and repoussé worker. He appears to have had a large share in the production of figures and moulds, and there is presumptive evidence that his work was of a superlative character.

Jesper Johansen Holm. 1780-1802.

Modeller. Born in 1747. Member of the Royal Academy. Trained by Wiedevelt, the sculptor. His statuettes are finely executed. See A Hero (with I HOLM 1780 incised mark), illustrated, p. 115, at National Museum, Stockholm. He became model-master in 1802.

Abildgaard. 1780-

Danish artist and sculptor, returned to Copenhagen from Continental travels in 1777, and brought new impulses. Consulted as adviser to factory in regard to art matters and correctness of modelling.

Martin Cadewitz. 1780-1791.

Served eleven years at factory. Died in 1791.

[Pg 108]

Johan Camrath, Senior. 1780-1796.

Portrait painter. Executed work for the factory till 1796. Died in 1814, in his seventy-sixth year. He was engaged on fine vases, and painted grey medallion panel portraits of Queen Juliane Marie, and other royalties, for important pieces. There is a small cup at Rosenborg Castle with the portrait of P. A. Heiberg painted by him. He was not permanently at the factory, but undertook work of a highly artistic nature.

Nicolaj Christian Faxoe. 1783-1810.

Born in 1762. Pupil at the factory in painting, 1783. Flower painter. Worked at the factory till his death in 1810.

Sören Preus. 1784-

Modeller. Executed the delicate flowers in relief on vases, baskets, and groups. The vases with Cupids and garlands, and the magnificent vase, with portrait of Queen Juliane Marie painted by Camrath, having a Cupid seated on body of vase amidst a garland of exquisitely moulded flowers and two lions finely modelled on cover, is the work of Sören Preus.

The baskets of flowers and bouquets and ornaments in the dessert centre pieces of the Flora Danica service suggest his master-hand.

[Pg 109]

Elias Meyer. 1785-1809.

Born in 1763 at Copenhagen, trained at Dresden. Flower and landscape painter. He occasionally marked pieces with his name. His work is not in the first flight. He died in 1809 as member of the Royal Academy.

M. Meyer. 1784-1792.

This artist was mentioned in conjunction with Camrath by Count Louis de Boisgelin, who visited the factory thirteen years after it had been founded. M. Meyer "is much esteemed for the beauty of his designs." It appears that both he and Camrath were not actually in the factory service on a fixed salary, but received payment for each piece executed.

Andreas Hald. 1781-1797.

Modeller and sculptor. This artist modelled a number of gracefully conceived figures. He frequently signed his work either A. Hald or with initials, incised, sometimes initials painted in blue, as on figure of Flute Player. See illustration, p. 127.

Johan Arentz. 1786-1796.

N. Bau. 1791-1820.

Landscape painter, animals and figures, genre subjects of peasants, and also silhouettes.[Pg 110] Bau was the head painter from 1812. He died in 1820.

Many of his landscape subjects are painted in purple.

Johannes Ludvig Camrath, Junior. 1794-

Flower and fruit painter. Born in 1779. Became pupil at factory in 1794. Died in 1849.

Carl Fridrich Thomaschefsky. 1780-

This painter, originally trained at Berlin, worked only a short time at the factory. A colleague of Lehmann.

Raben Svardahlyn. Hans Jacob Hansen. Christian Ahrensborg. Matthias Wolstrup. Schaltz.

These painters were engaged on the underglaze mussel-blue painted ware during the Müller régime, together with Lars Hansen, who, in 1777, was considered the leading painter in this style.

---

CHAPTER IV

FIGURE SUBJECTS
AND GROUPS
(1780-1820)

---

[Pg 113]

CHAPTER IV

FIGURE SUBJECTS AND GROUPS
(1780-1820)

The inauguration of new impulses, 1780—Luplau, the modelling-master—The figure subjects of Kalleberg—Classification of figure subjects—Old Copenhagen figures, their national character—The last days of Müller.

Apart from the royal busts and statuettes, the sumptuous vases with portraits of royalties, and the magnificent services made for royal use or for some important personage, culminating in the great and extensive Flora Danica service, there were other examples, notably figure subjects and groups, often of a minor character, and vases and services of less splendour in their decoration but not of inferior character.

The date of these may be determined as subsequent to the year 1780, when a retail establishment was opened in Copenhagen in the heyday of Müller's triumph, for the sale of the factory productions. An outburst of popular feeling hailed this adventure with delight. The chronicles of[Pg 114] the time are full of the subject. Hitherto great and important pieces were made under the Court patronage of Queen Juliane Marie and of Prince Frederik, her son, and important subjects were executed, giving to this period a character and dignity not surpassed by many of the older factories. But the royal factory now became the national factory. Henceforth merchants, burghers, the professional classes, and the Danish public in general were enabled to see a permanent exhibition of the ware of the Royal Porcelain Factory, and to purchase or give orders for a national ware which, naturally, was supplanting the use of all others in the country. In the year 1790 the importation of any foreign porcelain save Chinese was prohibited by law.

From 1780 to 1790 one may expect to find the factory in full enjoyment of success, particularly in regard to its manufacture and sale of utilitarian blue fluted services, underglaze painted, and of small figures and vases, overglaze painted, of a less magnificent character, designed for use and ornament in the home rather than representative of types more fitted for presents to foreign princes and plenipotentiaries. In 1790 Müller was fifty-eight years of age. In 1801 he had retired from the factory.

This chapter, while including important figures and groups, deals with types of a class which may be termed as in the second flight of Müller's artistic triumphs, and be it said much of the[Pg 117] work is contemporary with more ambitious creations equal in character to some of the finest.

As many of these minor pieces are dated and others have the signature of the artist or modeller, it is possible to arrive, with some degree of accuracy, at the period of their manufacture. Contemporary with all these overglaze painted examples of the factory one must not lose sight of the fact that the mussel-blue underglaze painted ware was continuously being made. New forms were being added, and its decoration with the "Danish pattern" adhered closely to the original floral motif now perennial to the ware.

Luplau, the Modelling Master.—In regarding the figure subjects, it must be borne in mind that the foreign assistance which Müller called in at the inception of the factory had not a little influence on the early and sure production of figures which could not have been attempted without experienced supervision. Under Anton Carl Luplau, the modelling-master who came to Copenhagen from the Fürstenberg factory, where he had spent eighteen years, the early stages of the Copenhagen modelling show a completer mastery of the technique than is usually exhibited by so young a factory.

But design and modelling, excellent though they undoubtedly were in the hands of Luplau, were only factors in the problem towards perfected results. The body, the glaze, and the colours were Müller's. Nor is it to be supposed that[Pg 118] Luplau contributed more than the idea, practical without doubt, but it is improbable that he carried his supervision beyond the plastic stages. All credit is due to him for instilling the principles of fine lines and graceful forms into the minds of the young potters. But it was Müller by day and by night, with long vigils, often all night, at the ovens with his workmen whom he was training to control the caprice of the furnace, who seized the situation and gladly profited by experience in his uphill struggle to establish his factory in the face of all difficulties. Müller had the genius of "moulding men in plastic circumstance." Nor was Luplau the swan he is sometimes thought to have been. There is a suggestion in one of Müller's letters to the board of management of the factory which illuminates the inner history. Speaking of Luplau, and probably the old story—the cost of production—he says: "On the contrary, he demands extra payment for any work which he does himself, and as the factory cannot afford this, most of the figures and moulds are made by Kalleberg, and in this work Luplau appears to take a very small share."

The Figure Subjects of Kalleberg.—The fertility of the early Copenhagen period when masterpieces, full of charm and perfect in style, rapidly appeared one after another in a short but crowded period, has puzzled students of the old period. To accept Luplau as the creator of them all, is to believe him classic and precise, and at the same[Pg 121] moment capable of transforming his style into elegant, restrained creations of gaiety and fanciful forms in due subjection. To omit the subtle and critical examination of style is to fall into the pit which contains those curious mortals who believe the exact, terse, and laboured prose of Bacon to be by the author of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet. To such, it is possible to credit Julius Cæsar with having written the ode of Horatius Flaccus to Lyde.

There is some mystery as to the designer of the dancing figures, the flute-player, the lady at the tea-table, the Copenhagen group, the Norwegian dalemen in Fredensborg, the mountain-men, and certain dainty Cupids. They differ entirely from Laplau's productions in every respect, and stand far above them in artistic merit. The late Professor Krohn, whose patient researches, on this and other vexed questions concerning old Copenhagen porcelain, were unfortunately broken off by his untimely death, was of the opinion that these figure subjects were the work of the repoussé worker Kalleberg. Authentic confirmation is lacking, other than the letter above quoted. Until further evidence is forthcoming and further investigations are made into the Müller period, we must accept the authentic pronouncement by Müller as the last word on the subject.

In regard to the employment of foreigners, it is certain that the experiment was not a success. Five workmen were inveigled from Meissen in[Pg 122] 1776. Out of the five, probably induced by monetary considerations to quit the Meissen factory, two did not make an appearance in Copenhagen. Of the three who came, it seems that only one showed any great talent. It would appear, too, that they exhibited an arrogance that stirred up strife in the factory. They received higher wages than the Danish workmen and began to assume correspondingly superior manners, with the belief that the factory could not proceed without them. But Müller speedily put an end to this state of affairs by closing the factory gates against them, and when they attempted to break in, he had them turned out by force. With these experiences in mind, it is not surprising that when, at a later date, some English workmen from the Wedgwood factory desired employment, they received scanty consideration.

Classification of Figure Subjects.—The figure subjects under examination in this chapter may be divided into the following groups:—

• Portrait Busts and Statuettes and Classic figures, in biscuit—
• such as those of Queen Juliane Marie and the Hereditary Prince Frederik, and the statuette of A Hero at the National Museum, Stockholm (illustrated, p. 115)
• Ornamental subjects, in white—
• [Pg 125]such as the centre-piece with the supporting Cupids at the Dansk Folke Museum, Copenhagen, and the remarkably fine vases, 4 feet high, at Frederiksborg, having powerfully modelled groups of female classic figures.
• Classic figures and subjects, decorated in colours, overglaze—
• such as the group Flora and Minerva by Jacob Schmidt and Sea Horses at the National Museum, Stockholm (illustrated, p. 119).
• Romantic subjects in costume, decorated in colours, overglaze—
• such as Lovers with Cupid and Garlands (illustrated, p. 123), and small figures of women and children in fanciful costume.
• There is at Frederiksborg Castle a group—Chinese Woman and Chinaman, who is offering her a basket of fruit. This Oriental subject is very rare. Marked with three lines underglaze in blue, but the yellow overglaze pigment on base has turned the blue into three green lines.
• Figure subjects in correct contemporary costume—practically a ceramic gallery faithfully reflecting the social character of the period—
• such as the Flute Player, the Lady and Gentleman dancing, the Beggar, and an especially fine series of peasant types in old costume, engaged at their various vocations—e.g. two groups of Norwegian Miners,[Pg 126] with black costume and green caps, with C7 in gold (at Frederiksborg Castle). The Woman with Hens, in Norwegian costume, a Market Woman with Fowls, a Lobster-seller, Woman selling Fruit, Woman milking Cow. Figures in naval and military uniform, and many others.

Old Copenhagen Figures—their National Character.—In regard to the series of figures in contemporary costume, there is an air about them which stamps them at once as being the work of the old Copenhagen factory. They are practically portrait studies, with that added touch of poetic charm which fits them for their place among the gods of the china cabinet.

They challenge comparison with the work of other European factories. Kändler, the modeller at Meissen, in what is styled the Krinolinengruppen period in mid eighteenth-century days, produced figures of lovers and ladies in rich costumes. They belong to that impossible world of the china-shelf, of shepherds and shepherdesses and bending cavaliers and gay ladies, conjured up in the fertile brain of the potter. They invaded France and they conquered England in the glorious days of Derby and Chelsea. But with a few notable exceptions they did not penetrate to Copenhagen.

The groups of Lovers with Cupids and chains of roses are two examples of this romantic movement[Pg 129] which came into the world of ceramics, a reflex of the decorative art of fashionable Court painters, who invented a topsy-turvy world of make-believe.

The quiet strength and the subdued restraint of the old Copenhagen figures stand out in contrast to this outburst of fanciful exuberance. The note of fidelity is as apparent in the figures in costume of the Müller period as it is noticeable in regard to floral decorations and modelled foliage taken direct from nature. Nor does this betray a want of imagination or a lack of ideality in choice of figure subjects. If it be classic, there is poetry in the statuette of A Hero, or a loose rein is given by the modeller to his Sea Horses, a poet's vision of the sea rollers leaping shore-wards from the Baltic. The fashion for the romantic did eventually tinge the Copenhagen atelier. Some of the little figures are graceful, retiring, modest examples of the movement. It is true they are decked in impossible costumes, but the mode has in the transplantation acquired simplicity and reticence. Some of them suggest, in porcelain, the quaint charm of Kate Greenaway's world of picturesque children.

Of the gallery of contemporary life the Copenhagen figures, in the main, are faithful likenesses. The dancing cavalier and lady (see Frontispiece) represent persons who actually did dance as they are modelled. There is nothing added except that touch of the modeller's genius in catching[Pg 130] the rhythmical pose of the poetry of motion which crystallizes them as a work of art. The Flute Player is equally caught in the act, natural and unobtrusive. There is nothing affected in his attitude or in his costume (illustrated, p. 127). It is such traits as these which endear the old Copenhagen figures to connoisseurs. The glaze is rich and liquid and the colours are subdued in tone and appeal to lovers of subtlety in art. Whatever extraneous influences in art press upon the work of the Danish potters, there is a process of refining which they seemingly undergo, and in so doing

Suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.

As may be imagined, these old-world figures are much treasured by Danish collectors, who realize that they represent a national phase of art and form a record of quaint and forgotten costume. The sellers in the market-place, the women with fowls, the fisherman with the striped jersey and shiny hat familiar in old prints of our own sailormen, and the Admiral with his speaking trumpet—it might be the great Fischer himself, of the days when fleets were sweeping the North Sea and the Baltic—come with peculiar associations from bygone days.

The Last Days of Müller.—The illustrations herein given cover this diverse field and serve to indicate the versatility of the modellers who[Pg 135] worked during the Müller period. The peasant types and some of the smaller figures belong to the latter days of the Müller régime. Although Müller retired from the factory in 1801, he kept in touch with what was in progress. His hand may not have been on the helm, but he had spirit enough left in his retirement to burst forth with pungent criticisms upon the later methods pursued, and there is no doubt the old veteran was frequently consulted by those upon whom his mantle had fallen. The fiery spirit of Müller, proof against all adversity, with the eye of the eagle saw across a longer space than men of ordinary vision. "Everything which has been done after I left the factory," growls out the fiery old man, "has been to its detriment." And who shall say that his words were not true?

Müller had heard the guns booming in the Sound in 1801, he had seen the havoc of bombardment by an alien fleet in 1807. His heart's desire, his beloved factory, had been wrecked. A great man's treasure-house of dreams had been devastated. The story of the ruin which overtook the factory comes with stunning poignancy with the knowledge that owing to the misery which followed the war the factory actually closed down in 1810, for a time, owing to the want of fuel. Years after the death of Müller and the glories of his day had departed, a number of his oldest models and moulds were found in a heap of shards stowed away in a loft in the old factory.[Pg 136] At the removal to the new factory at Frederiksberg it was hardly thought worth while to carry them away.

Fortunately, this was done, and in spite of their wrecked condition, loving hands have pieced them together. It is now happily possible to reproduce faithfully some two hundred of the beautiful models of the great days.

Frantz Heinrich Müller, the greatest potter of Denmark, is not dead, although his ashes have lain in a nameless grave for nearly a century. His memory still lies green in the hearts of those who love great things finely conceived, great triumphs nobly won, and great dreams perfectly consummated.

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CHAPTER V

THE FLORA DANICA SERVICE
(1790-1802)

MADE FOR CATHERINE II,
EMPRESS OF RUSSIA

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[Pg 139]

CHAPTER V

THE FLORA DANICA SERVICE
(1790-1802)

MADE FOR CATHERINE II, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA

The Crown Prince Frederik (afterwards Frederik VI) orders the Flora Danica service to be made—A period of twelve years occupied in making it—The taste of the Empress Catherine II of Russia—Theodor Holmskjold, the botanist—The service.

A separate chapter is devoted to the great service executed by the Royal Copenhagen Factory during the years 1790 to 1802. It takes a place with other great services, the masterpieces of old and distinguished factories, such as the magnificent table service of pâte tendre Sèvres porcelain finished in 1778 for the Empress Catherine II of Russia, consisting of about 750 pieces and costing some £13,200. The Empress, it is interesting to read, considered this price exorbitant, and a lengthy diplomatic correspondence ensued. This service was part of the imperial collection at St. Petersburg. The celebrated Wedgwood[Pg 140] dinner service of earthenware made for Catherine II and delivered in 1774, consists of painted English scenery, depicting famous views and noblemen's seats. This comprised over 950 pieces, and a portion of it was exhibited in London in 1909 by Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, of Etruria, by permission of late His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia.[7]

The Flora Danica service had as a patron the Crown Prince Frederik, the son of Christian VII and Queen Caroline Matilda. In 1784 another palace revolution had happened. The power of Queen Juliane Marie and her son, the king's brother, was broken. Prince Frederik (afterwards Frederik VI on the death of his father Christian VII, at the age of fifty-nine, in 1808) assumed the presidency of the State Council, after an unseemly struggle for the person of the imbecile king had taken place between him and his uncle Frederik, Prince Hereditary, resulting in the complete rout of the latter. The same day, April 14, 1784, the Crown Prince Frederik was proclaimed Regent. From that moment the rule of the Queen Dowager and her son Frederik was ended. She and her son retained their apartments at Christiansborg Palace, and Fredensborg was set apart for the use of Queen Juliane Marie. She lived in retirement until her death[Pg 141] in 1796. Her son Frederik refrained from meddling in State affairs, and confined his attention to the welfare of art and science.

Frederik VI, endeared to his people more than any other Danish king, in spite of his military brusqueness, was as simple and frugal as our own Farmer-King, George III, whose grandson he was. Frederik's blue cotton umbrella is still exhibited as a relic in his apartments in Rosenborg Castle, and at his death, in 1830, all classes mourned the loss of a friend. Peasants bore the coffin of the old monarch tenderly to his last resting-place at Roskilde.

He was twenty years of age when Count Marshal Bülow, with a fatherly regard for the Crown Prince, and desirous of giving that touch of refinement denied the youth by the naturalistic theories of Struensee and the sterner methods of the Queen Dowager, took him from his military duties to pay early morning visits to the Royal factory. These glimpses into a world of artistry cannot have been other than stimulating to the young prince. Struensee's Rousseau-like training had made him a child of nature, and Juliane Marie had twisted him into the cast-iron grooves of a stiff and formal Court etiquette. In regard to art, he came at a time when the love of nature was becoming paramount. The age was rapidly shaking off the artificial. Sated with rococo ornament and with insipid and frivolous unrealities, the pendulum swung to the natural and to the[Pg 142] essentially simple. Straight or shapely curved lines became the fashion. The period of Louis Seize had succeeded the rococo taste of Louis Quinze in Continental art.

The Taste of the Empress Catherine of Russia.—From 1784, when he made his coup d'état, Frederik advisedly gave important orders to the royal factory. In 1790 the Flora Danica service was ordered by the Crown Prince. It was not at first known for whom it was intended. The old factory books record it as "Perle model broge malet med Flora Danica" (Pearl body, colour painted with Flora Danica). As the service progressed it transpired that it was to be presented to Catherine II, Empress of Russia. The modern spirit was in the air, the new style was realistic and tinged with a scientific motif; moreover, it was to be a gift to a bluestocking. The Empress Catherine essayed to make her Court the centre of letters and art. At great cost she purchased the library of Diderot, and invited him to come to St. Petersburg to be the custodian of his own collection. She corresponded with Voltaire and she talked philosophy with Grimm, who, in his celebrated Correspondance Littéraire, kept her informed of the latest plays and books appearing in Paris. She established a French theatre in St. Petersburg, and fined absentee courtiers fifty roubles and sent her guards to bring in those who had failed to attend. French visionaries looked to Russia as a land of promise. Voltaire never[Pg 143] tired of proclaiming that the Mohammedans should be driven out of Europe. And the Empress Catherine was to be the chosen instrument. The philosopher of Ferney, with his pen dipped in honey, writes:—

"Si vous étiez souveraine de Constantinople votre majesté établirait bien vite une belle académie grecque; on vous ferait une Catériniade; les Zeuxis et les Phidias couvriraient la terre de vos images; la chute de l'empire ottoman serait célébrée en grec; Athènes serait une de vos capitales; la langue grecque deviendrait la langue universelle; tous les negocians de la mer Egée demanderaient des passeports de votre majesté."

The great Danish service was therefore to be a fitting present for so powerful a queen. For some twelve years the work was continued uninterruptedly. At first it was designed for eighty persons, and in 1794 no less than 1,835 pieces were ready. The death of the Empress Catherine II in 1796 precluded the service joining those of Sèvres and Wedgwood in the imperial palace at St. Petersburg. But its manufacture was still continued. In 1797 it had enlarged its dimensions, and was fit for a hundred persons. In 1802 it was stopped. If counted in English fashion, with lid, bowl, and stand as three pieces, the number had grown to three thousand pieces, or some two thousand, counting such vessels as one piece. The dessert service alone amounted to six hundred and twenty-three pieces, consisting[Pg 144] of basket vases, flower and fruit stands, and, as is usual in dessert services, exceptionally fine examples, elegant, finely modelled, and exquisitely painted.

The date of the completion of the Flora Danica service practically coincides with the date of the retirement of Müller from the directorship of the factory, and therefore with this service ends the great and prolific Müller period.

In the examination of the Flora Danica service considerable attention has been paid to the artistic and decorative results, but insufficient study has been given to the causes which led to the inception of so scientific an idea in regard to the record of the national flora on a service of such importance.

Theodor Holmskjold, the Botanist.—The patron, as we have seen, was the Crown Prince Frederik. The artist entrusted with the painting of the work was A. C. Baÿer, but the guiding spirit of the enterprise undoubtedly was Theodor Holmskjold, who was a botanist of some distinction, had studied under the world-renowned Von Linné at Upsala, and was his favourite pupil. Holmskjold, a director of the factory throughout the great Juliane Marie period, and almost to the end of Müller's long control, brought the scientific spirit of exactitude into the field of decorative art. Originally by name Holm, he took, after his ennoblement in 1781, the title of Holmskjold. He was professor of medicine and natural history at Söroe, the Danish Eton, where he planned a[Pg 147] botanical garden, and later he took part in the management of the Botanical Gardens at Copenhagen. His work on Danish Fungi is distinguished by the artistic excellence of the illustrations, which were made by Baÿer. In 1767 he became postmaster-general of Copenhagen. In 1772, the year of the masked ball at Christiansborg, we find him cabinet secretary to Queen Juliane Marie. Undoubtedly at that time the man of science put aside his dried specimens to join in the whirl of politics and Court intrigue which ended in the seizure of Struensee and Queen Matilda—the gallows-tree for the dictator and imprisonment for Denmark's young queen. The classification of fungi was seemingly little enough preparation for the pinking of Court butterflies, when plots of assassination were rife, and when the actors' heads were not secure on their shoulders. But Holmskjold, together with another student, Suhm, the historian, who came from his library and helped to make history, ably acquitted himself. He was a trusted confidant of Queen Juliane Marie. It was he who induced the queen to take up Müller's company, and himself (then Holm) became one of the directors.

Long after Queen Juliane Marie's power had waned, we find him true to his allegiance to her, as in 1792 he became chamberlain to her Court. His connection with Müller was intimate. A widower in 1780, Müller married Holm's somewhat elderly sister. In brother-in-law Holm Müller[Pg 148] found a good patron. His position at the Court, his relationship with Müller, his intense desire to win renown for an enterprise to which he had himself obtained the royal appellation, made him at once a powerful and interested ally. He died in 1793, before the final completion of the great service to which his influence had contributed so much, but not before he had seen the establishment of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain under the régime of Queen Juliane Marie, his mistress, attain great eminence and distinction.

It is impossible to ignore Holmskjold's special and particular influence on the character of the decorations of the great Copenhagen Catherine II service. The personality of the botanist-director is here evident. But apart from this individual influence, in an examination of the causes likely to have contributed to the style of decoration employed, passing mention must be made of the great national enterprise planned by Oeder in 1761: the original idea being that all European Governments should contribute to a series of volumes illustrating the complete flora of Europe. By this scientific co-operation duplication was thus to be avoided, and each plant would be described once only.

Denmark alone took sufficient interest in the botanical work to complete it. Austria touched the fringe of her flora with five hundred illustrations, and Russia contributed a hundred. So the Flora Danica, under the guidance of several[Pg 149] generations of botanists, ploughed its solitary furrow alone. The first volume, containing the first three parts, was issued by Oeder in 1766. The plants were painted in situ by zealous artist-botanists who travelled to the remote districts of Denmark. This magnificent undertaking was in its earliest stages when the great porcelain service was in contemplation.

It is interesting here to note the further history of the great botanical work. Five parts were issued by O. F. Müller from 1775 to 1787. Vahl, the great botanist, who died in 1804, followed on by another five parts, and the next seventeen parts, extending over a period of thirty-five years, were under the editorship of J. W. Horniman, who published a history of the progress of the work from its inception down to 1836. By royal decree in 1847 it was decided to accept illustrations of Swedish and Norwegian plants not found in Denmark, thus increasing the scope and value of the work. It was to be completed in fifty-one parts, and not until the year 1883 was this great botanical work of the Flora Danica pronounced finished!

It will thus be seen that, apart from Holmskjold's special and particular predilections, there were general and national impulses directed towards this work of exceptional character and of European importance. It may readily be imagined that, prior to the advent of the Flora Danica service, the artists at the royal factory who[Pg 150] painted flowers had, under the vigilant eye of the specialist director, to paint them from nature. A convolvulus did not become so decoratively treated as to evade identification. The Greek honeysuckle pattern of conventional use would not have passed at Copenhagen. Conventionality was as much eschewed in decoration as was the rococo in modelling. It is thus evident that nature and nature study, so remarkable and beautiful a feature in Copenhagen porcelain, owes not a little to the trained scientific vision of Theodor Holmskjold, the botanist.

Other factors enter into the question of the consideration of this Flora Danica service. It is obvious that the national feeling in artistic and scientific circles was centred on nature and nature study. Jean-Jacques had shown mankind that Dame Nature was capable of being wooed with intense passion. It was not until the late eighteenth century that the beauties of landscape began to be assiduously sought after. Travellers crossed the Alps from one country to another and regarded the frowning mountain, the sombre pass, or the rushing torrent much in the same manner as the unpoetic mariner feared the hurricane. Nature in her majestic loneliness was appalling. The sunny slopes of the Apennines concealed volcanic terrors. The smile of the blue Lake of Como was as treacherous as the dancing waves of the fickle sea itself. Lakes and mountains and mountain gorges were to be[Pg 153] avoided; no mortal had conceived the idea of discovering their beauty. They were as fearsome as the Pillars of Hercules to the Latin mariners.

In England, Thomas Gray, the poet, made a journey into Westmoreland and Cumberland in 1765 to see the Lake Country. His letters are the first note in English literature of man's kinship with nature. It took a century for the modern thought to germinate—"great men are part of the infinite, brothers of the mountain and the sea." As early as 1739, Gray's letters to his mother are filled with passages extolling the grandeur of the crags and precipices of the Alps, at a time when Rousseau had not developed his later method, and Vernet had only commenced to paint the turbulent sea with ecstasy.

In Denmark, in 1790, when the first model of the Flora Danica service was turned on the potter's wheel, this inquiring and reflective spirit was in the air, and the general tendency manifestly found a reflex in the great national service being manufactured at the Royal Porcelain Factory. The Russian Government had already entered into co-operation in a small degree in regard to bringing the records of the Russian flora into line with that of Denmark, and Catherine II, as is known, was the patron of the German naturalist Dr. P. S. Pallas, who, in 1784, commenced a Flora Russica, which was to eclipse anything yet attempted. This was to be published at the expense of Catherine. At her wish Pallas had in 1768[Pg 154] undertaken a scientific expedition to Siberia, which occupied six years.

In this connection, therefore, and knowing the Empress Catherine to be a votary of science and of art, the services made in England, France, and Denmark for imperial use were not undertaken without due consideration of this fact. The Sèvres service was embellished with the art of the schools of Boucher, Lancret, and Watteau; the Wedgwood service was frankly topographical, having painted copies, in mulberry purple, of old engravings, and Copenhagen was designedly botanical, based on the coloured illustrations of the Flora Danica volumes.

The Service.—A notable visitor to the factory at the time of the inception of the Flora Danica service was the Chevalier Louis de Boisgelin, Knight of Malta, who published his Travels through Denmark and Sweden in English in two volumes, at London, in 1810. The Comte Alfonse de Fortia, his fellow-traveller, had previously published Les Voyages de deux François dans le Nord de l'Europe. As a trustworthy account of a contemporary eye-witness the opinion of de Boisgelin is quoted:—

"The most beautiful porcelain likely to be sent for a long time from this manufacture will be a complete service upon which is to be represented, in natural colours, all the plants of the Flora Danica, with one upon each piece, large or small, according to the dimensions of the piece. The name of the plant will be marked under the[Pg 155] plate, and the whole is to be classed according to the Linnæan system. The drawings are traced with such wonderful accuracy, that the most famous painters belonging to the manufactory would not undertake so difficult and slavish a piece of work."

This last statement as to the mechanical accuracy required in the painting of the flora stamps it as something outside the realm of the ordinary flower painter, and indicates at once the extreme scientific definition of drawing required.

The Royal Copenhagen Factory had come to be recognized by other Continental factories as excelling in the modelling of flowers, and as exhibiting truthful and natural beauty in their employment for decorative effect. The originality of the shapes of this service in comparison with those of contemporary factories shows them to possess a fine reticence which does not detract from the grand and imposing character of the imperial service. The border is a new and bold treatment with serrated leaf design, richly gilded and having three rows of gilt pearls. In point of decoration the new style is realistic, but far too scientific in treatment.

As a service it is magnificent. It amply fulfils the great and inspired conceptions of its originators. Luplau was still a modeller, skilful and practised in his own field of dignified, restrained, and well-balanced forms compelling admiration, and the bouquets and floral ornaments were modelled by[Pg 156] Sören Preus. In painted decoration the scientific atmosphere is only too evident. Baÿer's pencil too faithfully followed the botanical volumes of the Flora Danica. Each piece is different; the whole gamut of the flora was covered, but each subject was obviously not equally suitable for decorative effect. True decorative art, however realistic, is alien from scientific exactitude.

The plants with their roots, leaves, and cross-sections of the stems evade decorative treatment. The scientific spirit is further exhibited in the written Latin names and references to the text of Flora Danica appearing at the back of each piece. But it must be reiterated that it was intended as a present to a votary of Von Linné, and the scientific study of nature had challenged the capture of nature by art.

The magnificence of the great service is the magnificence of a great series of ceramic volumes, reflecting in another medium the triumphs of the illustrated volumes of the Flora Danica.

It is the first instance of the Copenhagen factory searching for designs in a domain foreign to the true natural sources of inspiration proper to the artist designer on porcelain. Another and later instance is the series of imitative porcelain statuettes after Thorvaldsen's creations in marble.

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CHAPTER VI

EARLY BLUE-AND-WHITE
UNDERGLAZE PAINTED

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[Pg 159]

CHAPTER VI

EARLY BLUE-AND-WHITE UNDERGLAZE PAINTED

The "Danish Pattern"—The Bornholm Clay period—Peculiarities in marking—Table of Marks (old blue-and-white underglaze painted porcelain).

The blue-and-white underglaze painted porcelain of Copenhagen has become recognized as characteristic of the royal factory and of Denmark. The original design is of Chinese origin, in common with other forms of decoration, centuries old, followed by all European potters in early days when the art of making true porcelain was discovered in the West. But, like many another transplantation in art, it found congenial atmosphere, and has become national to the country of its adoption. The light, graceful plant motif shown in the blue-and-white painted fluted porcelain is as welcome a sight to Danes the world over as the slender twin spires of Roskilde Cathedral, where the kings of Denmark sleep in eternal peace.

The "Danish pattern" bears in a measure a[Pg 160] certain relationship to works in literature where the translation is greater than the original.

This is especially true when the work of a decadent period is translated into the richer tongue of a more golden age. The English Bible translated in the time of James I is richer in its fine wealth of prose than the "original sacred tongues."

Some arts have been lost. It is said that the art of translation has never been discovered. All have laboured after it in vain; it is as hard to seek as hidden treasure, and one never finds it. But the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory found the "hidden treasure" in the design which has grown into a thousand shapes inspired by the traditions of Müller, who "laid the East in fee," and whose successors true to his memory are not those

Who would keep an ancient form
Through which the spirit breathes no more.

From the manor farms of Vendsyssel to the confines of Danish-built Altona, from the white cliffs of Möen to the ancient roofed city of Ribe, the blue-and-white underglaze painted porcelain plates and dishes have been family heirlooms since the days of Christian VII.

The Flora Danica service represents the greatest complete creation in the overglaze painted work of the royal factory, and this blue-and-white[Pg 165] stands as the greatest and most complete creation of the underglaze work.

It has been advanced, and on sure grounds, that this Copenhagen blue-and-white porcelain, with its continuity of national design extending in unbroken line for over a century and a quarter, is the largest service the world has seen. It has grown by steady process of evolution into thousands of well-defined forms, rich in inventive modelling, and keeping abreast with modern requirements, and it is to this day decorated with the old pattern of the early days. This of itself is an achievement not equalled by any other factory. A Copenhagen breakfast set of the twentieth century or a tête-à-tête tea service can stand beside eighteenth-century blue-and-white porcelain from the same factory, and be in perfect harmony in colour, in decoration, and in character.

Kindred and allied by birth,
And made of the same clay.

The "Danish pattern" in blue was not long in attracting copyists from other European factories. To-day in Copenhagen itself English faience transfer-printed in blue stands as a trade imitation and a tribute to the genius and originality of its prototype. Possibly the potter plagiarists may never have heard of the pregnant words of Goethe: "There are many echoes, but few voices."

The Bornholm Clay Period.—Mention has already been made, in dealing with the early discoveries[Pg 166] of Müller and the experiments he made, of the clay which he found in the island of Bornholm. This clay forms the body of some of the earliest-known pieces made by him. It may be readily recognized by its heavy weight and by its grey tone. It is easy, after making an examination of a great number of specimens of the old blue-and-white ware, to distinguish this Bornholm period, even although in the two years (1773-1775) prior to the adoption of the three blue lines as a factory mark, some pieces bear no mark whatever. It somewhat resembles certain heavy Japanese ware in its compact and solid body and grey-blue colour.

The author has made a fairly exhaustive test of several hundred pieces, both in public and in private collections. The gradual development in regard to the perfection of the paste and the glaze is so noticeable that it is possible to place the old blue-and-white fluted ware in successive grades according to the stages of evolution. At first coarse, though never meaningless nor offensive, when the ware was obviously in an experimental period, it betrayed fire-cracks and warpings in form and slight departures from perfect symmetry. Later it became whiter and thinner, and was manifestly more completely under the control of the potter. When the perfected period was reached, there were tea caddies, pounce boxes, and, in particular, certain dishes, of which an example is illustrated (p. 169) which are not[Pg 171] unworthy to be compared favourably with specimens of old blue-and-white Worcester of the early period. There is a delicacy and refinement in the modelling and potting, and that tenderness in the glaze and thinness in the body which at once betoken that the technique has been subjected to the patient potter's control.

Peculiarities in Marking.—For the first time in any treatment of the subject, the potters and modellers' marks are given in a table appended to this chapter, which the writer hopes will be found useful in identifying early examples. These hieroglyphics, usually accompanied by the factory mark of the three blue lines, are painters' marks, and in the case of incised marks are representative of the modellers or turners. It may be possible, upon further research being given to the subject, to identify the individual marks of each painter or modeller, and thus arrive at some more definite conclusion in regard to the date at which these early blue-and-white pieces were made. But until the exact list of painters at the factory, together with the dates at which they were employed, is subjected to exhaustive research, it is obviously impossible to establish more than the present series of marks, with limited conclusions in regard to chronological order. The marks now given have been specially drawn from old examples of undoubted authenticity.

There is one peculiarity in connection with the marks found on this early blue-and-white porcelain.[Pg 172] The bases are frequently ground, and the factory mark of the three blue lines, with an accompanying painter's mark, are on the base, with little spots of glaze put over them no bigger than a threepenny-piece. Another idiosyncrasy of Copenhagen marks, not confined to the blue-and-white, is the almost hidden position in which some of the marks are found. In overglaze painted figures the three blue lines will peep from beneath the hem of some garment. In the blue-and-white examples the mark is sometimes found on the inside of the handle of a teapot or on a lid. In some of the earlier pieces the blue mark has turned to black under the action of the oven. Similarly, in the early days of experiments in connection with the perfecting of the blue, a series of plates will be found of exactly the same decoration and bearing the same painter's signature; but the caprice of the fire, or the inexact knowledge of the craftsman, has converted the blue of some of them into a very deep blue, approaching black in tone.

There is no doubt that the old blue-and-white porcelain of Copenhagen has not yet been exploited by collectors. It came concurrently with the rich overglaze painting in colours and the magnificence of gilding for which the Müller period is remarkable. It stands quite apart; its decoration is underglaze, and not at that time, nor since, has gold ever been added to this mussel-blue painted and fluted utilitarian ware other[Pg 173] than in very exceptional circumstances. It is simple and delightful, and what it was in the old days it is now. The style of painted decoration is perennial. It is a pattern known all over the world. It has lived for a hundred and thirty-six years. Its life-history suggests the long-continued idealities of the Chinese potter or the coloured intricacies of the Persian rug-weaver continued by the wise children of clever craftsmen with equal fidelity from generation to generation.

[Pg 174]

TABLE OF MARKS

(Old Blue-and-white Porcelain Underglaze Painted)

of Painters and Modellers, found usually in conjunction with the Factory Mark of the three blue lines. Painter's mark in blue. Modeller's mark incised.

Mark found on examples of the Bornholm clay period, see Apothecary Jar (illustrated, p. 161).