Tea bowl
At Martha Washington's invitation, French officers of General Rochambeau's army dined at Mount Vernon on July 20, 1782. The Comte de Custine de Sarreck, commander of the Saintonge regiment, sent ahead of his arrival a splendid tea and coffee service specifically made for the Washingtons at his Niderviller porcelain factory. The service's stunning array of gilded and enameled borders, each with its own pattern number painted on the pieces' undersides, suggests Custine intended it to advertise his wares to a new American market. Gifts of porcelain were common between the French aristocracy and Americans who traveled to Paris. The service Custine presented to the Washingtons is, however, the only known instance of 18th-century French porcelain crafted for an American recipient.
Published ReferencesCadou, Carol Borchert, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), p. 89, cat. 22.
Detweiler, Susan Gray, "The Ceramics," Antiques 135, no. 2 (February 1989): 499, 500, pl. VI.
Detweiler, Susan Gray, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), pp. 67-76, fig. 52 (top right).
Lossing, Benson J. Mount Vernon and Its Associations, Historical, Biographical, and Pictorial (New York: W. A. Townsend and Company, 1859), pp. 240-41. Lossing incorrectly identified "The set of china presented…by the French officers to Mrs. Washington as "MW" monogrammed service presented by Van Braam to Martha Washington in 1796.
Meadows, Christine. "The Custine China." MVLA Annual Report, 1978, pp. 26-8.
Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: MVLA, 1962), pp. 25-28.
