Chinese Export Porcelain, circa 1780
H. 10 inches
Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies' Association
Five-piece Chinese garniture sets were common furnishings in elite early
American homes and were generally placed for display on fireplace mantels. George Washington owned a set of Chinese porcelain blue and white garniture vases with gilt decoration, which included this beaker. The vases remained at Mount Vernon until Martha Washington’s death in 1802, when she willed “all the blue and white China in Common use” to her granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis.
In 1878, descendants of Eleanor Lewis sold four of the vases to the United States government, which have been in the Smithsonian Institution since its inception. Until recently, scholars believed that the fifth piece in the set was lost. The January 2004 Americana sale at Christie’s, New York, produced the missing beaker vase in the sale of the effects of Miss Betty Washington Whiting, a direct descendant of Eleanor Lewis. Mount Vernon acquired the last remaining piece from Washington’s set through the assistance of an anonymous donor. The beaker vase will be displayed in a museum facility opening at Mount Vernon in 2006.
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