Starting in the 1600s, Europeans were fascinated by the blue and white and white porcelain exported from China during the Ming and Qing dynasties,[2] but Danes had to discover for themselves how to produce these "white gold" (white glaze) that they found so irresistible about porcelain.
Royal Copenhagen, officially the Royal Porcelain Factory (Danish: Den kongelige Porcenlæfabrik) is a manufacturer of porcelain products and was founded in Copenhagen May 1, 1775 under the protection of Queen Juliane Marie . It recognised by its factory mark, the three wavy lines above each other, symbolising Denmark’s three straits: Oresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt.
In recent years, Royal Copenhagen acquired Georg Jensen in 1972, incorporated with Holmegaard Glasværk in 1985, and finally Bing & Grøndahl in 1987. Today, Royal Copenhagen is a part of a Scandinavian group of companies, Royal Scandinavia, together with Georg Jensen, and is owned by the Danish private equity fund, Axcel.
Following Axcel's acquisition of Royal Scandinavia, Holmegaard Glasværk was sold in a MBO and a controlling interest in the Swedish glass works Orrefors Kosta Boda was sold to New Wave Group. In April 2008 it was reported that Royal Copenhagen was moving nearly all of its production to Thailand
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