As part of the most visible household in the nation, china used in the White House offers a comprehensive overview of the changing styles, tastes, and modes of entertaining across almost 250 years of American history, from George Washington to Joseph Biden. Philadelphia Museum of Art curator David Barquist explores the history of the porcelain tableware chosen by American presidents and their families for public and private dining. He also looks at the changes over time in the ceramics available to Americans.

Barquist focuses on pieces from the museum’s McNeil Americana Collection of American Presidential China, which features examples from 15 state services purchased for official use as well as presidential families’ china. He talks about—and shows exquisite images of—Martha Washington’s “States” china, imported from China and derived from Benjamin Franklin’s design for colonial Pennsylvania currency; the first official state service, ordered from Paris by James Monroe in 1817, with allegorical representations of the United States’ power and prosperity; the Rutherford B. Hayes state dinner and dessert service from 1879, which has elaborate depictions of American flora and fauna; and a Wedgwood state service chosen by Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt in 1903 to harmonize with the renovation of the White House during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.

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