Today in Smithsonian History: April 24, 1990
Flora Danica Ice Cream Dome by Royal Copenhagen. Currently out of stock, the ice dome retails for US$43,000.
April 24, 1990 “Flora Danica and the Heritage of Danish Porcelain,” an exhibition surveying the forms, techniques and decoration of Danish porcelain, opens at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Princess Benedikte of Denmark attends the opening reception.
A product of The Age of Enlightenment, Flora Danica is a comprehensive atlas of botany, containing folio-sized pictures of all the wild plants native to Denmark, in the period from 1761-1883. It was proposed by G. C. Oeder, then professor of botany at the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen, in 1753 and was completed 123 years later, in 1883.
In 1790 the Danish Crown Prince Frederik ordered a dinner set made decorated with exact copies of the plates of Flora Danica. The dinner set was meant as a gift for Russian Empress Catherine II. Catherine, however, never received it, as she died in 1796. The dinner set is still in use for state occasions in the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. Copies of the set are sold by the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory.
A 101-piece service for 12 of Flora Danica was priced at almost U.S. $170,000 by M.S.Dau Antiques (not including the ice cream dome.)
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Posted: 24 April 2019
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