This Chinese porcelain bottle, with its fantastic, vigorously modeled, dragon handle may have been owned by the Washingtons. It descended in the family of Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis Lewis, to whom she bequeathed “all the blew and white china in common use.” The inventory taken of Mount Vernon after George Washington’s death lists a “Wash bason & pitcher” in almost every one of the bedrooms. In an era before indoor plumbing, this equipment enabled the Washingtons and their contemporaries to maintain the cleanliness of face and hands that was indicative of gentility.