Bottle slider

Salver and wine coaster
Silver plate
Salver - c. 1783
Coaster - c. 1790

Status

Not on view

Label Text

Bottle sliders or "coasters" permitted diners to move wine bottles across the table and refill their own glasses more easily while preventing the table's wood surface from being damaged by moisture. With its orderly pierced bands, perfectly symmetrical flowers and neatly engraved festoons, Washington's bottle slider - one of eight he requested Lafayette to purchase in France in October 1783 - smartly updated his dinner table to the internationally popular neoclassical style.

Read MoreRead Less

Datec. 1783

Geography Possibly made - FrancePossibly made - England

Medium/TechniqueFused silverplate on copper, unidentified hardwood

DimensionsOverall: 1 5/16 in. x 5 1/8 in. x 5 1/8 in. (3.33 cm x 13.02 cm x 13.02 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, 1981 Conservation courtesy of the Life Guard Society of Historic Mount Vernon

Object numberW-2802

DescriptionCircular coaster with pierced and engraved sides featuring two bands of a chevron-like design enclosing six, equidistant circles separated by festoons; five of the circles are pierced with eight-petaled flowers, the sixth is blank. Most decoration appears to be stamped in imitation of bright-cut and wrigglework engraving. Coaster rests on a flat, turned wooden bottom or base incised with concentric circles and having an ivory button at its center. Drawn, stepped silver bands applied around outside of rim and base.

Alternate names for this form include: bottle coaster, bottle slide, bottle slider, bottle stand, wine coaster.

Published ReferencesCarol Borchert Cadou, The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hills, 2006), 114, fig. 1.

Kathryn C. Buhler, Mount Vernon Silver (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, 1957), 37-42, 69, fig. 36.

Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington as First President of the United States. Committee on Art and Exhibition, Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Portraits, Relics, and Silverware Exhibited at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, April 17th to May 8th, 1889 (New York: Trow's Printing and Bookbinding Company, 1889), #350, 81.

Wyler, Seymour B. The Book of Sheffield Plate. New York: Crown Publishers, 1949. pp. 22, 24, 50.

Caldicott, J.W. The Values of Old English Silver and Sheffield Plate, From the XVth the XIXth Centuries. London" Bemrose & Sons Limited, 1906. Plate XVII, #2.

Mount Vernon's object research is ongoing and information about this object is subject to change. For information on image use and reproductions, click here.