Tureen; porcelain. ‘The Bird service’
Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1780

The Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory produced dinnerware and figurines right from the outset. However, dinner services were not a very high priority in the first years. The reason for this was that as of 1779, the manufactory was owned by the king, and the royal household was not short of dinner sets. Nevertheless, experiments were carried out with several different dinnerware designs, predominantly completely smooth ones. Various types of decorations and patterns also saw the light of day. They were executed by the factory’s staff of painters, who clearly drew inspiration from other factories, especially the ones in Meissen, Berlin and Fürstenberg.¹

‘The Bird service’, the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory’s first large dinner service of the shape with the swirling curves, was produced only once. It originally comprised 627 pieces.²

As the name suggests, the bird decoration is the main distinguishing trait of the service, making it quite unique: No other dinner service ever produced by the factory sports similar designs. The decorations consist of exotic birds and insects depicted in polychrome colours, either perched on or placed near flowering trees or branches. The motifs were taken from various eighteenth-century prints.³

‘The Bird Service’ is richly represented in The David Collection, which owns a total of forty pieces, including a tureen, dishes, sauceboats and plates. Other pieces can be found in the collections at Designmuseum Denmark and CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark.

The tureen is inv.no. KP 104m