In most households across America, the dinner party is typically an event of food and fellowship. For special occasions demanding a good impression, the “good china” is required. At the White House, special occasions call for state china, a finery laid out to both impress and honor. Since the early days, the selection of White House china has required much attention.
It is that china that is the subject of the exhibition “Setting the President’s Table: American Presidential China from the Robert L. McNeil Jr Collection,” on view at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens through January 21.
The story opens in 1789 with George and Martha Washington, whose presidency began in a house in New York rented and furnished using funds allotted by the government. When the Washingtons moved to a larger house nearer Federal Hall, they brought along their own belongings and added to the stylish French furnishings of the previous occupant, the Comte de Moustier, whose recall to Paris the president had arranged.
When the government relocated to Philadelphia in 1791, the furnishings from the President’s House were moved there. While the President’s House was very simple in comparison to the palaces of European heads of state, it was still far grander than the homes of most Americans.
As president, Washington saw his role as one of establishing the office and of defining and representing the nation and the national taste. Carol Borchert Cadou, associate director of the estate and director of collections at Mount Vernon and co-curator of “Setting the President’s Table,” describes him as a man of elegance and sophistication who established the taste of the young nation. She organized the exhibition as providing an insight into the man behind the myths.
Washington was interested in aesthetics, domestic and political, history and art, and he recognized the need for the proper and polite entertainment of presidential guests. The china he selected reflected the ideals of the new republic: refined and sophisticated. In that spirit, he sought the impressive and avoided the ostentatious, a standard that, for the most part, has been maintained since. Washington’s choices included Chinese Export blue and white ware (the Washingtons ordered no fewer than nine sets of blue and white over the course of their lives). His friend, Colonel Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, in 1785 bought him a 302-piece blue and white service that had arrived in New York aboard the Empress of China , the first American ship to trade with Canton. The decoration was the figure of a winged and trumpeting Fame holding the eagle insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati.
A Canton service was presented in 1795 to Martha Washington by Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, who decorated it with a chain of 15 medallions of the 15 states that by then included Kentucky and Vermont, a serpent swallowing its tail, a Latin verse and Mrs Washington’s monogram.
A French porcelain tea and coffee service presented to Martha Washington by the Comte de Custine was decorated with scrolled floral elements and the initials “G.W.” The count also assembled a simple and elegant white service with gilt dentate borders from Sevres and other French factories that he sold or presented to the Washingtons. They used it for important occasions during the presidency and in retirement at Mount Vernon.
The three subsequent presidents had no official china of record; the 1814 burning of the White House by the British in the War of 1812 destroyed whatever furnishings and records that the valiant Dolley Madison had not been able to remove.
James Monroe was the first president to commission a state service. The porcelain was French, made 1817 in Paris by Dagoty and Honore, and was decorated with a centered eagle, olive branch and shield, celebrating the victory of the War of 1812. In the interim between commission and delivery, Monroe sold his own gold and white French porcelain service to the government for use in the White House.
Only 17 state china services have been commissioned since Monroe’s order, a number that represents fewer than one-third of the presidential administrations, says exhibit co-curator David L. Barquist, curator of American decorative arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which houses the McNeil collection from which this exhibit is drawn.
In 1861, Mary Todd Lincoln became the first First Lady to select a state service on her own. She chose a French porcelain state service in the Alhambra pattern decorated with a central eagle and shield in a wreath of clouds. The service had been designed by the E.V. Haughwout and Co. for the White House under Franklin Pierce but was never approved. The original design had a blue border. Mary Todd Lincoln requested a far more striking color, a bright magenta called “solferino.” The Lincoln service was used throughout the Nineteenth Century, and it has been reordered more than any other presidential china service.
All nine of the presidential services commissioned in the Nineteenth Century were French, which was considered the epitome of good taste. Most were decorated with official and patriotic emblems of the republic. The first American-made state service was commissioned by the Wilson administration in 1918 from Lenox of Trenton, N.J. The cream-colored service with gilt trim was the first to bear the presidential seal, designed in 1877 by President Hayes. It was reordered during the Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and Clinton administrations.
“Setting the President’s Table: American Presidential China from the Robert L. McNeil Jr Collection” surveys the history of American taste from the perspective of White House tableware and entertainment. Only those pieces actually used in the official presidential residence are on view.
Barquist said he and Cadou designed the exhibit with the aim of documenting the changes in ways of entertaining over two centuries, the changes in perceptions of the national identity and the development of American ceramics.
It is a multifaceted exploration of several aspects of American history and the stories are rich. The china itself documents setting the national taste and its evolution over two centuries, collecting patterns, preservation and the celebration of the American heritage.
As Cadou observes, “‘Setting the President’s Table’ examines what it means to be presidential and speaks to what it means to set the taste of the nation.”
Patriotism is a perennial element in the decoration of presidential china. Monroe’s service, for example, was decorated with an image of the Great Seal, which was adopted in 1782 after six years of design and discussion. The use of the seal on the china celebrated the victory of the War of 1812
The Rutherford B. Hayes administration gets high marks for the graphically compelling and technologically accomplished presidential china chosen by First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes. The 562-piece high Victorian service was designed by Harper’s Weekly artist Theodore Russell Davis and produced in 1879 by Haviland and Company in Limoges. The cost was $3,120.
It has 130 different designs that include elk, bears, ducks, a snowshoe and a cottage where the artist observed the flora and fauna. Cadou notes that the service was produced at Limoges for seven years for the White House and for general sale. Not everyone admired it, however. President Franklin D. Roosevelt so disliked the Hayes service that he gave several pieces to the Girl Scouts for a rummage sale.
President and Mrs Hayes were interested in the history of the White House and they established the collection of portraits of presidents and first ladies. They were both antiquarians and preservationists and they oversaw the restoration of furniture they found in the White House attic and basement. After the excesses of the Grant administration, the country was eager for a dose of sobriety. The Hayes administration embraced temperance and the president banished liquor from the White House, earning his wife the sobriquet “Lemonade Lucy.”
Chester A. Arthur, elected in 1881, did not move into the White House until after a major renovation He commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany to revamp the White House in what was remembered as the apogee of Nineteenth Century American decorative arts.
President Arthur’s redecoration caused the removal of 30 barrels of china and 24 wagon loads of furniture from prior administrations. Such periodic purges of the White House household effects have been a boon to collectors. An 1882 account of the auction of the estate of Caleb Lyon, an early collector of presidential china, notes, “Plates which belonged to different Presidents of the United States sold at prices far more than their intrinsic values.” Such values were $6 for a Jefferson Chinese plate, $4 for a John Adams plate and $6 for a Lincoln plate. A dinner plate from Washington’s Society of Cincinnati service was $65. Legislation was enacted in the early Twentieth Century preventing such dispersals of presidential effects. When dessert plates for the Johnson service proved less than expected, White House staff members smashed them against the walls.
Elinor Gordon, doyenne of American porcelain, recalls having sold Chinese Export presidential china over the years, some to collectors and some to citizens who donated the pieces back to Mount Vernon. She bought a Washington Society of Cincinnati plate 50 years ago for what she considered at the time a “most reasonable $800,” and she compares that to another example with serious damage that sold at auction in 2007 for some $90,000. The most desirable presidential china? Probably Washington, she says.
When Theodore Roosevelt assumed office in 1902, he engaged McKim, Mead & White to renovate the White House and restore the empire décor. The state dining room, which formerly seated 60, was expanded to seat more than 100. A new and large set of china was required †a service of 1,320 pieces of Wedgwood cream-colored porcelain decorated with the Great Seal of the United States and with gilt reeded borders.
First Lady Edith Roosevelt, cognizant of the popular interest in presidential china, continued the project begun by Caroline Harrison to complete the collection of presidential china. The project was continued by Helen Taft and Ellen Bolling Wilson, who established the White House china room. Mamie Eisenhower was interested in presidential china and she set about classifying and reorganizing the collection. She acquired pieces of personal china from administrations that had no official china so that every administration is represented.
Mount Vernon is 16 miles south of Washington, D.C., and 8 miles south of Old Town Alexandria, Va., at the southern terminus of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The street address is 3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway. For information, 703-780-2000 or www.mountvernon.org .
