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Dinner plate

Dinner plate
Porcelain (hard-paste), gilt
Maker: Sevres Porcelain Manufactory
c. 1778-1788
Dinner plate
Dinner plate
Porcelain (hard-paste), gilt
Maker: Sevres Porcelain Manufactory
c. 1778-1788
Dinner plate Porcelain (hard-paste), gilt Maker: Sevres Porcelain Manufactory c. 1778-1788
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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Date1778-1788
Maker (French, 1756 - present)
Gilder (French, active 1776 - 1778)
Geography Made - France
DimensionsOverall: 9 3/4 in. x 9 3/4 in. x 1 15/16 in. (24.77 cm x 24.77 cm x 4.93 cm)
Credit LineGift: Jess and Grace Pavey Fund, 2007
Object numberW-4573
DescriptionCircular molded plate with a scalloped rim and shallow foot ring. Rim features six large scallops separated by two smaller ones, and is decorated with a gilded (dent-de-loup) border.
Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), 148, cat. 42.

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

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

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


MarkingsOverglaze mark painted on underside (in yellow): factory mark or cipher of intertwined Ls surmounted by a crown, the letter "B" below. (Crown indicates hard-paste porcelain; "B" is the unidentified gilder's mark).
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