Arnold Krog

Arnold Krog (Frederiksværk, 1856 - Copenhagen, 1931) was a Danish architect, painter and designer. He is remembered above all for directing the artistic output of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain factory from 1884 to 1916, a period in which he revived a company that had fallen into decline.

Trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied architecture and graduated in 1880, he travelled to Italy between 1877 and 1883 to study majolica ceramics. At Royal Copenhagen he moved the factory away from the stiff Empire style of earlier decades towards a more Impressionist manner, combining underglaze painting with Japanese influences and European naturalism. At the Nordic Exhibition of 1888 in Copenhagen he introduced the first underglaze memorial plate from the factory, a precursor of the later Danish Christmas plates.

Beyond porcelain, he designed silverware and furniture, and he is credited with the Polar Bear Fountain for the Peace Palace in The Hague. After retiring in 1916 he turned to landscape painting and etching, and he held solo exhibitions at Kleis' gallery on Østergade in 1919 and 1923.

His legacy lies in the visual identity of Royal Copenhagen, whose early twentieth-century renewal is still closely associated with his name.