Danish Luxury

Design Tableware Royal Copenhagen

Blue Fluted Plain

Royal Copenhagen's first pattern, from 1775: fluted white porcelain painted by hand in cobalt blue, known as Pattern No. 1 and in Danish as Musselmalet.

First made
1775

Visit royalcopenhagen.com

Blue Fluted Plain plate, 27 cm
Blue Fluted Plain plate, 27 cm
Three Blue Fluted Plain shallow bowls
Three Blue Fluted Plain shallow bowls

Pictures © Royal Copenhagen, from royalcopenhagen.com.

Why it is renowned

Blue Fluted Plain is Royal Copenhagen's signature pattern: its first, still in production, and shown in Milan in 2023 in the exhibition This is Denmark at Alcova during Milan Design Week.1 It has been copied and reinterpreted by many porcelain and faience factories in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe, and Kalundborg Museum gave the pattern and its copies an exhibition of their own.2 Its Danish name is Musselmalet, mussel-painted; in English-speaking countries it is called Blue Fluted.3

The story

The pattern goes back to the blue and white porcelain that ships brought to Europe from China.4 The factory chose it as its first service when it opened in 1775, meant from the start as its flagship, and it was given the number 1.52 The flower at the centre changed over the years and took its lasting form in the early 1800s.4 About a hundred years after the first service, the artistic director Arnold Krog turned an early full lace dessert plate into the Blue Fluted Full Lace dinner service and introduced the simpler Blue Fluted Half Lace.52 The blue is cobalt: a rich vein found in 1772 in Norway, then part of the joint kingdom, became an industry grinding cobalt for glazes.3 The name may come from the fluted and plain fields that recall a mussel shell, or, as Krog held, from the cobalt colour once called mussel colour.4 Each piece is still painted by hand.4

Sources
  1. Royal Copenhagen: a timeless passion for blue, DesignWanted. designwanted.com, read 5 October 2026.
  2. Musselmalet – historien om et mønster, Sjællandske Nyheder. sn.dk, read 5 October 2026.
  3. Royal Copenhagen, Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org, read 5 October 2026.
  4. Blue Fluted Plain, Royal Copenhagen. royalcopenhagen.com, read 5 October 2026.
  5. Our History, Royal Copenhagen. royalcopenhagen.com, read 5 October 2026.

Last checked 7 October 2026, against the maker's own pages.