Saucer
As president, George Washington desired tablewares that would strike a stylistic balance between appearing too regal and not being sufficiently dignified enough 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.
Published ReferencesCadou, Carol Borchert, The George Washington Collection" Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2006), 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 "36 Tasses à thé 4/144 [livres]".
Mount Vernon China (Mount Vernon, VA: MVLA, 1962), 29-34, fig. 21 (right).
Savill, Rosalind, The Wallace Collection: Catalog of Sévres Porcelain (London: The Trustees of the Wallace Collection, 1988), 2:527-33 (for description of "Bouillard" cups and saucers).
William Armstrong, "Some New Washington Relics. I. From the Collection of Mrs. B.W. Kennon," The Century Magazine 40/1 (May 1890): 20.
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