{"product_id":"estatefreshaustincom-772","title":"9 7\/8\" Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica Sedum Acre \"Mossy Stonecrop\" Soup Bowl","description":"Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica Sedum Acre \"Mossy Stonecrop\" Soup Bowl 9 13\/16\"\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;wide x 2\" deep. Just a tad over 9.75\" but smaller than 9 7\/8\". Vintage piece in\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;like new condition very closely examined with no cracks, chips, nicks on rim,\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;wear to gilding, utensil marks, or restorations. Selling the exact bowl show,\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;hand painted. I don't believe this bowl or even this size of bowl is currently\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;available for any price but you can buy an 8.25\" soup bowl new for a little over\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;3k on special order.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Flora Danica: The Amazing Story of the World’s Most Expensive Dinnerware\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;February 28, 2017 \/ Decorate, Entertain, Gift Ideas, Registry\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;War. Diplomacy. Royal backstabbing. A Russian Empress who loved art and beauty.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;All that went into the making of the world’s most expensive dinnerware, Flora\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Danica by Royal Copenhagen.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Our story begins with Catherine the Great of Russia. In 1788, she was at the\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;height of her power and prestige, having come to power 26 years earlier by\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;deposing her husband in a coup. The formerly impoverished German princess was\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;now the absolute ruler of the largest empire in the world, and she followed up\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;one stunning achievement with another: Expanded Russia into the Black Sea and\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Crimea. Made Russia a major European power. Annexed Alaska. Reformed the\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;government. Ushered in the Enlightenment. Check, check, check.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Catherine awed her contemporaries. Voltaire compared her to the Biblical Queen\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Semiramis of Babylon. Madame Vigée Le Brun, former court painter to Queen Marie\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Antoinette and no stranger to royalty, wrote that “…with her head held high, her\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;eagle-like stare and a countenance accustomed to command, all this gave her such\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;an air of majesty that to me she might have been Queen of the World…”\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;She was also the ideal Enlightenment ruler: Patron of the arts. Friend of the\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;leading philosophers and thinkers. Champion of knowledge and learning, for women\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;as well as men. The magnificent collections of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Museum, a must see on any tour of Russia, actually began as her personal art\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;collection.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;In 1788, Catherine the Great was at war with the Ottoman Turks a second time.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Her cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, decided to take advantage of the\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;situation and attack Russia in the back. To deter him, Russia had signed a\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;treaty with Denmark 15 years earlier. But when the war started, the Danes didn’t\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;move. They had problems of their own: their King Christian VII was insane, his\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;wife Queen Caroline Matilda had an affair, her lover Doctor Johann Friedrich\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Streunsee fathered one of her children, the King’s mother ordered him executed\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;and the Queen banished, then had herself and the King’s elder son rule as\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;regent. But we digress.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;The Russians demanded that the Danes honor their obligations. When the Danes\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;finally showed up, they came up with a smaller force than originally promised. A\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;few months later, when the war ended, the Danes felt mightily embarrassed. It\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;was also not a good idea to get Catherine the Great and Russia on your bad side.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;But how do you make amends with the absolute ruler of the world’s greatest\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;empire?\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;They must’ve thought long and hard about this one and figured out three things:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;First, Catherine was a well-known lover of the arts. She bought thousands of\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;paintings from all the major European artists of the day. She also commissioned\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;porcelain, metalwork, glasswork, and books, and she even wrote comedies,\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;fiction, and memoirs herself.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Second, she was also a known patron of the French Encyclopedists, a group of\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;philosophers including Voltaire, Diderot, and d’Alembert who set out to gather\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;all the world’s knowledge into one grand Encyclopedie so that it could be\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;available universally.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Finally, and this was key: They knew that the Russians had been after fine\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;porcelain for over 70 years. True hard paste porcelain was very precious in 18th\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;century Europe. Much whiter and stronger than stoneware, it was exclusively used\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;by the royalty and aristocracy, and all the major royal families of Europe had\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;set up their own porcelain factories in towns like Sevres, Limoges, and Meissen.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Catherine the Great loved porcelain so much, she turned the Russian porcelain\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;factory in St. Petersburg into the “Imperial Porcelain Manufactory” and placed\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;massive orders for her and her family’s private use.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;And so the Danes came up with an idea: Let’s create the world’s finest\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;collection of porcelain which is also an encyclopedia of art. But it had to be\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;so amazing that Catherine the Great would (hopefully) forgive their failure to\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;help Russia during the war. They trusted the task to the Danish royal porcelain\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;factory, Royal Copenhagen, and its chief artist Johann Christoph Bayer:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;They commissioned a dinnerware collection of 1,802 pieces. They used the finest\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;porcelain they could manufacture and then rimmed them in gold in a lace-like\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;detail — just to be sure it was nice enough. Other pieces featured delicate\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;flower buds that were carved out by hand:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Then, 3,000 flora and fauna from the Flora Danica botanical encyclopedia of 1761\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;would be individually hand-painted on the dinnerware pieces:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;With this much decoration, the porcelain pieces are “overglazed,” which means\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;they are decorated after being glaze-fired in the brightening kiln to produce\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;the wide range of colors and the richness of detail. Then they are fired once\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;more at about 850°C or 1,562 °F after they are painted, to allow the paints to\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;melt and fuse with the fired glaze. Immediately after firing the gold\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;decorations look matte and dull. Their characteristic gold sheen appears only\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;after vigorous polishing with glass brushes or sand:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;The result was something so magnificent, they could be used for state banquets\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;or just displayed as works of art in Catherine’s great palace in St. Petersburg:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;This multi-year project was probably intended as a gift for the 40th anniversary\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;of Catherine the Great’s reign in 1802. But in 1796, Catherine suddenly died of\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;a stroke. Her death caused chaos in Europe. Her son and successor, Paul, hated\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;her and wanted to undo everything she started. He even dug up the remains of her\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;dead husband, Peter III, for an elaborate state funeral before burying him with\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;her — condemning her to spend eternity with the man she deposed and killed.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;The Danes got the hint. They weren’t giving Paul the fine porcelain intended for\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;his mother — he might’ve just smashed it to spite her! But they must’ve been so\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;pleased with how this collection was coming along, their regent Prince Frederick\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;VI, ruling Denmark in his father’s name, continued its production and even\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;ordered some more, expanding it to 100 place settings.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;In 1802, the production was finally finished. By now Paul was also gone: the\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Russians finally decided he was too crazy and poisoned him, replacing him with\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;his 24-year-old son Alexander I (of War and Peace fame.) But the Danes weren’t\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;giving him their prized porcelain. The first Flora Danica dinnerware service was\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;delivered to the Danish Royal Palace, where Frederick VI used it to celebrate\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;the birthday of his father King Christian VII in 1803, probably at their\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;splendid Rococo-style Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen:\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;It must’ve been a very nice thing to do for his father, who suffered\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;schizophrenia, was forced by his mother to divorce his tragically adulterous\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Queen, and had been sidelined for over 30 years already. And Flora Danica\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;continues to be used by the Danish Royal Family for special occasions to this\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;day.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;Today, Flora Danica is regarded as one of the most original and inspired\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;examples of from the golden age of porcelain. It has also been collected by\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;today’s royalty: Oprah, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, and various members of\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;the Kennedy family. Royal Copenhagen continues to make it by special order from\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;its factory in Denmark — the last porcelain dinnerware made in Denmark.\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;tw211","brand":"sale - www.estatefreshaustin.com Estate Fresh Austin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471877947608,"sku":"8614350428_C0B9","price":1665.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0677\/6284\/7960\/files\/9-78-royal-copenhagen-flora-danica-sedum-acre-mossy-stonecrop-soup-bowlestate-fresh-austin-642432.png?v=1757907269","url":"https:\/\/estatefreshaustin.com\/it\/products\/estatefreshaustincom-772","provider":"Estate Fresh Austin","version":"1.0","type":"link"}