Royal Copenhagen three waves

How to read it

Arthur Hayden’s history of the factory (1918) says the company’s first meeting, on 1 May 1775, adopted the mark proposed by the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie: three wavy lines in blue for the Øresund, the Storebælt between Zealand and Funen, and the Lillebælt between Funen and Jutland. William Chaffers’s catalogue of marks reads the lines the same way. In 1779 the king took the factory over and it became the Royal Porcelain Manufactory. The factory’s own circular of 1904 says the crown above the lines had been added “a few years ago”.

Also searched as: dating royal copenhagen, royal copenhagen marks, three waves porcelain mark, three wavy lines mark.

Three founding dates

The sources start the factory in different years, and the mark’s date follows the company’s. Chaffers says the hard-paste factory was begun by an apothecary named Müller in 1772 and became a royal establishment in 1779. Hayden says Frantz Heinrich Müller showed his first hard porcelain to Christian VII in 1773, that the company was formed in 1775, and that pieces made from 1773 to 1775 carry no mark. The factory’s 1904 circular gives 1779 as the year the works were established, and Fiskars Group today gives 1775.

Where the lines are painted

The lines turn up in more places than the centre of the base. Hayden found the factory mark on early blue-and-white pieces under small spots of glaze on a ground base, inside the handle of a teapot or on a lid, and on figures peeping from under the hem of a garment. On some early pieces the blue turned black in the kiln. Painters’ marks are often painted beside the lines, and modellers’ or turners’ marks are incised.

Look-alikes

Another Copenhagen factory, Bing & Grøndahl, founded in 1853, marked its wares with the initials B & G, Hayden says; Chaffers gives the same year. Hayden describes collectors weighing pieces marked B & G against those with the three blue lines.