Platter
Label Text
Planning his return to Mount Vernon after the Revolution, George Washington wrote New York merchant Daniel Parker to procure for him a "neat and compleat sett of blue and White Table China." Unable to find any "ready packed" sets, Parker and tavern keeper Samuel Fraunces instead amassed 205 pieces of mixed forms and designs for the General. This platter may be one of the "27 Dishes" Parker shipped to Virginia in September 1783. The Washingtons used these unmatched wares for informal dining for the rest of their lives. Martha Washington referred to it as the "blew & white china in common use" when she willed it to her granddaughter, Nelly Parke Custis Lewis.
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Date1770-1780
Geography
Made -
China
Medium/TechniquePorcelain (hard-paste)
DimensionsOverall: 12 1/2 in. x 9 3/4 in. (31.75 cm x 24.77 cm)
Overall: 9 1/8 in. x 13 in. (23.18 cm x 33.02 cm)
Credit LinePurchased by the A. Alfred Taubman Acquisition Endowment Fund, 2001
Object numberW-4179
DescriptionRectangular, octagonal platter with undulating edges and oval well. Underglaze blue decoration features a landscape with pavilion and weeping willow at left and pagoda in distance at upper right. Border of flowers, butterflies and other emblems.Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), pp. 146-7, cat. no. 41.
Susan Gray Detweiler, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), pp. 77-80. Fig. 61 is a slightly larger platter with identical underglaze blue decoration.
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