Blaafarveværket

Blaafarveværket, or the Blue Colour Works, was a mining and industrial company located at Åmot in Modum in Buskerud, Norway. It was founded by King Christian VII in 1776 and became the largest industrial company of the country in the 19th century. The works mined cobalt ore and manufactured by smelting blue cobalt glass (smalt) and cobalt blue (cobalt aluminate) pigment. It is currently a large open-air industrial museum and an art gallery.

Blaafarveværket was founded by King Christian VII of Denmark-Norway in 1776. Its early history is closely tied to that of the Royal Porcelain Factory in Copenhagen, as cobalt was essential for decorating porcelain. The establishment of the company represented an enormous investment on the part of the King, equivalent to the tax revenues for all of Denmark-Norway for a whole year. According to historian Ingerid Hagen, Blaafarveværket was one of the few Dano-Norwegian companies with lasting significance from the mercantilist era, played an important role in Norwegian trade with Denmark, Holland and countries in Asia and had a decisive impact on the Norwegian economy in the period around 1814.

During the Napoleonic Wars the royal company was pledged by the king as security for a loan, and when the state could not redeem the pledge after the Napoleonic Wars, it was taken over by the bankruptcy estate of the Swedish businessman Peter Wilhelm Berg, and sold at a public auction to a group of investors led by the prominent Berlin banker Wilhelm Christian Benecke (since ennobled as Baron Benecke). The purchase, officially in the name of a Christiania-based merchant who acted as a strawman, was orchestrated by Benecke's young associate Benjamin Wegner, who came to Norway to evaluate the company and buy it if he saw fit. After few years Benecke and Wegner formally acquired all the shares, and the company legally operated as Benecke & Wegner. Wegner also took over as director-general (CEO), a position he held from 1822 until 1849. During Benecke and Wegner's ownership, the company saw a large expansion and became the largest company in the country. It employed more than 2,000 workers, and in its peak supplied 80 percent of the world market for cobalt pigments. Wegner also instituted many important social reforms for the workers.

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