The Service.—A notable visitor to the factory at the time of the inception of the Flora Danica service was the Chevalier Louis de Boisgelin, Knight of Malta, who published his Travels through Denmark and Sweden in English in two volumes, at London, in 1810. The Comte Alfonse de Fortia, his fellow-traveller, had previously published Les Voyages de deux François dans le Nord de l'Europe. As a trustworthy account of a contemporary eye-witness the opinion of de Boisgelin is quoted:—
"The most beautiful porcelain likely to be sent for a long time from this manufacture will be a complete service upon which is to be represented, in natural colours, all the plants of the Flora Danica, with one upon each piece, large or small, according to the dimensions of the piece. The name of the plant will be marked under the plate, and the whole is to be classed according to the Linnæan system. The drawings are traced with such wonderful accuracy, that the most famous painters belonging to the manufactory would not undertake so difficult and slavish a piece of work."
This last statement as to the mechanical accuracy required in the painting of the flora stamps it as something outside the realm of the ordinary flower painter, and indicates at once the extreme scientific definition of drawing required.
The Royal Copenhagen Factory had come to be recognized by other Continental factories as excelling in the modelling of flowers, and as exhibiting truthful and natural beauty in their employment for decorative effect. The originality of the shapes of this service in comparison with those of contemporary factories shows them to possess a fine reticence which does not detract from the grand and imposing character of the imperial service. The border is a new and bold treatment with serrated leaf design, richly gilded and having three rows of gilt pearls. In point of decoration the new style is realistic, but far too scientific in treatment.
As a service it is magnificent. It amply fulfils the great and inspired conceptions of its originators. Luplau was still a modeller, skilful and practised in his own field of dignified, restrained, and well-balanced forms compelling admiration, and the bouquets and floral ornaments were modelled by Sören Preus. In painted decoration the scientific atmosphere is only too evident. Baÿer's pencil too faithfully followed the botanical volumes of the Flora Danica. Each piece is different; the whole gamut of the flora was covered, but each subject was obviously not equally suitable for decorative effect. True decorative art, however realistic, is alien from scientific exactitude.
The plants with their roots, leaves, and cross-sections of the stems evade decorative treatment. The scientific spirit is further exhibited in the written Latin names and references to the text of Flora Danica appearing at the back of each piece. But it must be reiterated that it was intended as a present to a votary of Von Linné, and the scientific study of nature had challenged the capture of nature by art.
The magnificence of the great service is the magnificence of a great series of ceramic volumes, reflecting in another medium the triumphs of the illustrated volumes of the Flora Danica.
It is the first instance of the Copenhagen factory searching for designs in a domain foreign to the true natural sources of inspiration proper to the artist designer on porcelain. Another and later instance is the series of imitative porcelain statuettes after Thorvaldsen's creations in marble.