Royal Copenhagen figurine
1969 RC Lady & Beau Chr. T 1918 25 x 20 cm

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Item number: 112204

Description: Royal Copenhagen 1969 RC Lady & Beau Chr. T 1918 25 x 20 cm In mint and nice condition
Christian Thomsen (1860-1921)


Christian Thomsen, a woodcarver by training, was taken on as a modeller at The Royal Copenhagen. Porcelain Manufactory in 1898, and worked here until his death in 1921.


At the time of his joining the staff, the factory was going through a busy and happy period, which was to continue well into this century. The underglaze-decorated porcelain by Arnold Krog, the factory’s art director, which had triumphed at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889, had sparked off this period of regeneration. This success triggered off a whole new artistic renaissance which was to affect every aspect of the factory's porcelain production, including the production of figures, the field in which Christian Thomsen was to play a prominent role.


Christian Thomsen's arrival as a modeller coincided with the first attempts to use the new underglaze technique on figurines, which with time completely altered the concept of what porcelain figures ought to look like. However, a great man y of his figures is made both for overglaze- and underglaze-decoration.

Christian Thomsen was a very hard-working artist. Besides figures and vases he designed and carved 36 different motifs for Christmas and commemorative plates and reconstructed a number of pre-1800 designs, the original moulds of which had been last.


Further he found time to design book covers and bindings for the Copenhagen publisher Gyldendal. During the period 1906-1919, he regularly exhibited his figurines (in plaster) and his landscape drawings and sketches at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. Christian Thomsen achieved recognition abroad as well, winning a silver med al in Milan in 1908 and a gold medal in Brussels in 1910. His work was also warmly reviewed in contemporary German and English art journals.