Bottle slider
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.
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.