Garniture vase
"The obligations you are continually laying me under, are so great that I am quite overwhelmed and perfectly ashamed of myself for receiving them…the Jarrs came very safe…[they are] fine and exceedingly handsome, they shall occupy the place you have named for them." - George Washington to Samuel Vaughan, Mount Vernon, November 18, 1786
English merchant Samuel Vaughan's generosity still overwhelms visitors to Mount Vernon. In 1785, Vaughan shipped a costly Italian marble mantelpiece from his own country estate in England to be installed in Mount Vernon's "New Room". One year later, these striking, baluster-shaped garniture vases arrived. Their opulent dark blue grounds - a color perfected at Worcester in the late 1760s - marvelously frame the exotic landscapes with animals contained in the reserves. Displayed on the mantel, these vases were a focal point of the room and a signal of wealth and sophistication.
One of three garniture vases, with W-972/B and W-2260/A & B.
SignedOverglaze signature painted at lower left of both reserves (in brown): "ON invr&c,".
Published ReferencesSusan Gray Detweiler, "The Ceramics," Antiques 135/ 2 (February 1989): 500, pl. IX.
Susan Gray Detweiler, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), 97-102
Marian S. Carson, "Washington Furniture at Mount Vernon, II: The Banquet Hall," American Collector 16, no. 4 (May 1947): 6-7, fig. 2.
Benson J. Lossing, Mount Vernon and Its Associations, Historical, Biographical, and Pictorial (New York: W. A. Townsend & Co., 1859), 174-75.
Benson J. Lossing, "Arlington House, the Seat of George Washington Parke Custis, Esq.," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 7, no. 40 (September 1853): 442.
