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Plateau à deux pots à confiture

Confection dish and one cover on fixed stand
Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory
Porcelain (h ...
Plateau à deux pots à confiture
Confection dish and one cover on fixed stand
Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory
Porcelain (h ...
Confection dish and one cover on fixed stand Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory Porcelain (hard paste), gilt 1778
Status
Not on view
Label Text

As president, George Washington desired tablewares that would strike a stylistic balance between appearing too regal and not being sufficiently dignified enough to impress foreign dignitaries. In March 1790, he purchased a 309-piece service from the departing French minister, the Comte de Moustier. Moustier had acquired most of these porcelains from the royal manufactory at Sèvres in 1778, then added pieces from the Angoulême and Nast factories over the next decade. All are minimally decorated with gilded rims. Such understated elegance matched Washington's preference for neat and plain, while offering his guests fashionable French porcelain with a possible subtle reference to ancient white marble statuary and republican ideals.

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Date1778
Maker (French, 1756 - present)
Gilder (French, active 1757-1797)
Geography Made - France
DimensionsOverall (A & B): 2 3/4 in. × 10 in. × 7 in. (6.99 cm × 25.4 cm × 17.78 cm) Overall (A): 2 3/8 in. × 10 in. × 7 in. (6.03 cm × 25.4 cm × 17.78 cm) Overall (B): 1/2 in. × 3 1/16 in. × 3 1/16 in. (1.27 cm × 7.78 cm × 7.78 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, 1956
Object numberW-2126/A-B
DescriptionA:
Oval molded tray with two attached circular cups of equal size. Tray features an undulating rim with eight indentations and a shallow foot ring. Rims of cups and tray are decorated with gilded dentate (dent-de-loup) borders. The inside rims of the cups are unglazed.

B:
Flat, circular cover decorated with a gilded dentate (dent-de-loup) border.

Alternate names for this form include: tray with preserve pots, confiturier, plateau à confitures, plateau à deux pots à confitures.

Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection" Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), 148, cat. 42.

Detweiler, Susan Gray, "The Ceramics," Antiques 135, no. 2 (February 1989): 498, 500, pls. VIII-VIIIa.

Detweiler, Susan Gray, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), pp. 119-34.

Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: MVLA, 1962), 29-34.

William Armstrong, "Some New Washington Relics. I. From the Collection of Mrs. B.W. Kennon," The Century Magazine 40/1 (May 1890): 20.
MarkingsOverglaze mark painted on underside of tray (in red): factory mark or cipher of intertwined Ls enclosing a conjoined "AA" inside, surmounted by a crown, the letters "HP" below. (Crown indicates hard paste porcelain; "AA" year of manufacture [1778]; and "HP" is gilder's mark.) Underglazed incised mark to left of factory mark near foot: script letter "T" or "J".
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