A Set of Six Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica Porcelain Dishes

#18075o: A Set of Six Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica Porcelain Dishes
Danish, 20th Century
Height 3.5cm, width 27cm, depth 22cm
This matched set of six oval dishes belongs to Royal Copenhagen's Flora Danica pattern. Each dish has a shaped border pierced in a lattice of interlaced ovals and dots, finished in burnished gold above a gilt dentil rim. The border frames a well painted by hand with a single flowering plant.
The specimens are shown growing, with stems, leaves, buds and roots, following the plates of the Flora Danica atlas. The flowers are built up in thin washes and fine detail, and the foliage is modelled in light and shade. The roots are carried down into the well, so that each plant is drawn as a complete specimen rather than a sprig of ornament. As on the original service, each plant is identified on the reverse.
The lattice of the borders is cut by hand from the leather-hard porcelain before firing, and the openwork is then picked out in gold. Pierced dishes of this kind are among the more complex forms in the range.
The reverse of each dish carries the printed Royal Copenhagen mark: a crown above ROYAL COPENHAGEN DENMARK in gold, over the factory's three wavy lines in underglaze blue. The reverse also bears the painted pattern and form numbers (20 and 3537) and painters' marks.
Crown Prince Frederik, later Frederik VI, ordered the Flora Danica service from the Royal Copenhagen manufactory in 1790. Its decoration was copied plant by plant from Flora Danica, the atlas of Danish native flora begun under the botanist Georg Christian Oeder in the mid-18th century. Production halted in 1802 with the service unfinished, and much of it survives in the Danish royal collection. Royal Copenhagen later revived the pattern and has produced it to order, with each piece painted and gilded by hand. Oval dishes of this shape belong to the dessert service and were probably used for serving fruit.
$18,000