The Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory, which was later to become Royal Copenhagen, was founded by a pharmacist, Franz Müller (1738-1820), who was an expert in chemistry and also loved and studied mineralogy avidly.
Ine the early part of the 1770s he was experimenting with hard feldspar porcelain made from quartz, kaolin and feldspar. That was after all the secret recipe of the Chinese, which Meissen had recreated about fifty years earlier.
Meissen had successfully kept the secret to themselves for a very long time, but when Muller began experimenting, the ingredients of making fine porcelain were well known, had even been printed, but weren’t avidly being experimented with to make them better.
Müller was attempting to do just that and spent nearly all his free time and most of his money on experiments using a small porcelain kiln.
By mid 1774, Muller wanted investors, but the interest in his experiments and a new porcelain factory was weak, until the Dowager Queen, Juliane Marie ad her son become partners in a new porcelain company, which then thrived.
Royal Danish Porcelain Manufactory was run by the Royal Family for nearly a century, when in 1868, it passed its way into the hands of the commoners, still keeping that name and the allowed privileged of flying the royal flag.
The mid 1800′s saw new life and new artistry breathed into Royal Copenhagen, and it 
continued to thrive, supplying high quality goods to households the world over.
For more than two centuries now, Royal Copenhagen has furnished tableware and art, to several continents.
Royal Copenhagen is well known as high quality porcelain, and is collected world wide.
The Royal Copenhagen factory has of course changed marks several times over the course of two centuries, but the current systems is this one:
Crown and Royal Copenhagen Denmark in green and three blue wave marks (those actually represent the three straits of Denmark) Beginning in 1935, a green dot was placed over or under one of the letters of the factory name. Every time the dot moves right to the next letter it represents one more year, so that if you have a Royal Copenhagen piece from the time span between 1935 and 1984, you can quite easily figure the exact year of manufacture.
From 1935 to 1949 the dot appears over the top of one of the letters of Royal Copenhagen. 1950 to 1984 means that the dot appears below one of the letters of Royal Denmark Copenhagen.
The mark used currently for Royal Copenhagen is :
