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Dinner plate

Dinner plate
Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory
Porcelain (hard paste), gilt
1772-1788
Dinner plate
Dinner plate
Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory
Porcelain (hard paste), gilt
1772-1788
Dinner plate Maker: Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory Porcelain (hard paste), gilt 1772-1788
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 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)
Geography Made - France
DimensionsOverall: 1 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. x 9 1/2 in. (3.18 cm x 24.13 cm x 24.13 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mrs. Tobias G. Richardson, Vice Regent for Louisiana, 1890
Object numberW-612
DescriptionCircular molded plate with a scalloped rim and shallow foot ring. Rim features six large scallops separated by one smaller one, and is decorated with a gilded dentate (dent-de-loup) border.

Alternate name for this form includes: service plate.

Published ReferencesCadou, Carol Borchert, The George Washington Collection" Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), p. 148, cat. 42.

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

Detweiler, Susan Gray, George Washington's Chinaware (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982), pp. 119-34. See fn. 231, p. 193, for Moustier's purchase from Sèvres on May 9, 1778, which includes "60 Assiettes 6/360 [livres]".

Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: MVLA, 1962), pp. 29-34, fig. 19.
MarkingsOverglaze mark painted on bottom (in blue): factory mark or cipher of intertwined Ls surmounted by a crown, four dots to the lower right. (Crown indicates hard paste porcelain; and the dots are the gilder's mark). Underglaze incised mark below factory mark: "CC" (potter's mark), and near hole in foot: "| |" (unidentified potter's or turner's mark).
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