Decorated in rococo style with panels having allegorical subjects, one of which has a medallion supported by cupids upon which a crown and F5 are inscribed in gold. Festoons of flowers, painted in natural colours, are suspended from a ring at top of vase; all in high relief. Marked F5 in gold. (_In the collection of Count Moltke, of Bregentved._)] It is such human touches as these, significant in their piquancy, which give exceptional interest to the porcelain of the old days produced in conditions of no little difficulty. Under Court patronage, beset by espionage and hedged about by intrigue, the secret of one factory rapidly found its way across the frontier to the neighbouring State. The fortunes of potters have not lain in smooth places, and fate has been as capricious as the fire of the furnace. In eighteenth-century days the _furore_ of mad dilettantism pursued them relentlessly. Royal amateurs more often than not asked them to make bricks without straw, and there was still in the air the lingering suspicion that the furnace might yield up the secret of the philosopher's stone and fill the State treasury to the full. =The First Porcelain in Denmark.=--It is not difficult to imagine the situation. King Frederik V determined to found a porcelain factory of his own. His queen consort was Louise, daughter of George II, who died in 1751, eight years after her marriage. His second wife was Juliane Marie, of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. [Illustration: MARK. Fournier period (1760-1766). Soft-paste Porcelain.]