“Seascape” Royal Copenhagen porcelain vases

This set comprises two porcelain vases from the Royal Copenhagen factory, each adorned with a hand-painted maritime motif in the blue and grey tones characteristic of Danish porcelain. Both pieces demonstrate the manufactory’s mastery of the polychrome underglaze blending technique, in which the cloudy sky gradually merges into a lively sea, rendered with great pictorial finesse.

The first vase, with a slender baluster shape, features a solitary sailing boat gliding across a slightly choppy sea, beneath a changing sky streaked with white clouds. The second, of a more compact shape and set on a stepped base, depicts a traditional fishing boat with all sails set, identified by its registration number ‘H.L. 317’ painted on the mainsail, ploughing through a rough sea with foaming waves — a more dramatic, almost stormy composition.

Each piece bears, on the reverse, the Royal Copenhagen crown mark as well as the manufacturer’s characteristic three wavy lines, accompanied by a hand-painted form and decoration number, attesting to the uniqueness of each piece — a practice typical of 20th-century Danish artistic production, where each piece, although produced in the same workshop, remains an individual pictorial work.

Dimensions

Tall vase: H 43 cm — top diameter 18 cm — base diameter 14 cm
Wide vase: H 28 cm — top diameter 19 cm — base diameter 20 cm

Danish School, Royal Copenhagen, early 20th century

Background: The Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory was founded in 1775 under the impetus of the chemist Frantz Heinrich Müller, a specialist in minerals, who wished to produce porcelain made from quartz, feldspar and kaolin to compete with Chinese imports, which were highly prized but costly among the European aristocracy. When Müller discovered a Danish source of kaolin, Queen Juliane Marie seized the opportunity to bolster the local economy and the kingdom’s international prestige, granting Müller a fifty-year monopoly on porcelain production in Denmark. By 1779, the company was facing financial difficulties and was taken over by King Christian VII, who bestowed upon it the title of ‘Royal Porcelain Factory ’. For nearly a century, the factory was thus run by the Danish royal family. It was during this period that its most iconic creations came into being: in 1790, the factory began work on the famous Flora Danica service, commissioned as a gift for Empress Catherine II of Russia. This monumental service, comprising nearly 1,800 unique pieces adorned with Danish flora, required years of work and remains one of the absolute masterpieces of European porcelain. In 1868, as part of a privatisation process, the factory passed into private hands, whilst retaining its name and the privilege of flying the royal flag. A few years later, between 1882 and 1884, it merged with the Aluminia earthenware factory and moved to new premises in Frederiksberg, on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The factory won the Grand Prix at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, which brought it considerable international renown, further enhanced when Tsar Alexander III acquired several of its pieces. In 1987, the Royal Porcelain Factory merged with its long-standing rival Bing & Grøndahl, founded in 1853, to form Royal Copenhagen as it exists today. The brand, which remains the official supplier to the Danish Royal Court, continues to be one of the world’s leading names in fine porcelain.