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Bottle slider

Bottle Slider,
ca. 1784,
Fused silverplate on copper, unidentified hardwood
Bottle slider
Bottle Slider,
ca. 1784,
Fused silverplate on copper, unidentified hardwood
Bottle Slider, ca. 1784, Fused silverplate on copper, unidentified hardwood
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.

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Datec. 1783
Geography Possibly made - FrancePossibly made - England
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.
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