Dinnerware Diary

Dinnerware Blogger Attends Historic Presidential Inauguration

Hello again from Ross and Pinot the Blog Dog!

Garon Anders, former DinnerwareDiary.com blogger extraordinaire, just returned from our nation’s capital, where he had the opportunity to attend the Presidential Inauguration.  Garon’s partner, Jeremy, has an uncle who has worked in the State Department for more than 20 years.

“They’ve been posted many places,” Garon says.  “In Germany, Russia, the Ivory Coast of Africa. Soon they’ll be moving to accommodate the needs of the State Department on a new assignment.  When members of the family decided not to attend the Inauguration, Jeremy’s uncle offered the tickets to us.  We saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we wanted to be part of history!”

Garon and Jeremy flew into Reagan National Airport in Washington on Sunday.  That gave them all day Monday, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, to enjoy the sights.  “The museums and public buildings were closed for the holiday,” Garon says, “so everyone converged on the Mall. There were people everywhere, happy, celebrating people, some in drum circles, some singing gospel.  Total strangers would come up and start talking with us.  There were flags everywhere.  Flags were draped from all the buildings, and people were giving away small flags.  Practically everyone was carrying one!  We walked the entire length of the Mall, up and back,” Garon says.  “It must have been four miles!”

The original plans were for everyone to gather at the State Department to watch the Inaugural on wide-screen TV and view the parade.  But the last-minute needs of dignitaries changed those plans, and arrangements were made for guests to view the parade from the fourth-floor offices of a law firm right on Pennsylvania Avenue!  “Glass windows went from floor to ceiling,” Garon says, “so the view of the street was spectacular.”

View from office building where Garon watched the Inauguration and parade.

“While we were waiting for the Inaugural parade,” Garon says, “there were film presentations we could watch at the firm.  One was a History of the White House, and the other was a History of Air Force One. There were some interesting tips regarding dinnerware in those films,” Garon says. “Air Force One is so designated only when the President is actually aboard. For a number of reasons, one of them being security, there is a second Boeing 747 aircraft that is complete right down to the china, crystal, and silver on board, as an alternate for the President’s use. As for the White House, it’s the only building in the world that serves as both a residence and a museum for a head of state,” Garon says. “And there is a sterling silver coffee urn that is used there almost daily. It bears the monogram, “JAA.” Can you guess? The urn dates from the administration of John Adams, when Abigail Adams was the nation’s first lady!”

According to reports, there were 1.7 million people on the Mall for the Inauguration, and an additional 400,000 on side streets. Later that day, Garon and Jeremy traveled to Baltimore, MD, where they visited with friends and watched the Inaugural Balls on ABC TV. “The entire trip was enjoyable,” Garon says. “There was such a strong feeling of community.”

Our thanks to Garon and Jeremy. We look forward to hearing from Garon on the blog again soon. Don’t forget to visit our web site, and e-mail Pinot the Blog Dog and me at ross.howell@replacements.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Ross Howell

Inaugural Luncheon to Use China Pattern of President Abraham Lincoln

Hello from Ross and Pinot the Blog Dog! Recently we saw on CNN some information about the china that will be used at the Presidential Inaugural Luncheon. The service will be replicas of the pattern used during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and features the American bald eagle with the United States Coat of Arms. The illustration here is from CNN and the Senate Inaugural web site. We thought we’d see if we could find a little more information for you.

 

A wonderful reference is the book, Official White House China: 1789 to the Present, 2nd edition, by Margaret Brown Klapthor, published in 1999 by The Barra Foundation, Inc., in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. We checked online and found used copies available at amazon.com and alibris.com, and they’re quite expensive!  But the information and photographs in the book are truly remarkable.

According to Klapthor, although President and Mrs. Lincoln entered the White House in 1861 under the cloud of impending war, Congress had nonetheless set aside substantial funds for furnishing their new home.  Mrs. Lincoln felt there was too little china left from the service used in the administration of President Franklin Pierce to set a formal dinner, and embarked on a shopping trip to New York and Philadelphia to remedy the situation.

As Klapthor notes in her book, the May 16, 1861, issue of The New York Daily Tribune reported that Mrs. Lincoln visited the “establishments of Lord & Taylor and Messrs. E.V. Haughwout & Co.  At the latter establishment she ordered a splendid dinner service for the White House in ‘Solferino’ and gold with the arms of the United States emblazoned on each piece.”  This same firm, under the business name Haughwout & Dailey, had sold a dinner service to President Pierce.  Those plates featured a blue band; Mrs. Lincoln selected “Solferino,” a bright, purplish color in the palette she preferred not only for her home decorations, but also for her personal attire.

No backstamp appears on the Lincoln china purchased in 1861, other than marks on two bon-bon pieces.  According to Klapthor, it is likely that “blank” porcelain for the service was produced by the Haviland factory in Limoges, France, and supplied to E.V. Haughwout & Co., who would have had the pieces decorated by hand in New York City.  The set so delighted Mrs. Lincoln that she ordered one for her personal use.  When President Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, Klapthor notes that The New York World newspaper attacked Lincoln bitterly, accusing him of padding the bill for the official dinner service with the cost of the one used by his wife.  “Honest Abe” made payment for the second service from his own pocket.

Klapthor writes that the “royal purple,” or “Solferino” set originally purchased by Mrs. Lincoln in 1861 was augmented in subsequent administrations - first by President U.S. Grant in 1873, then by President Chester Arthur in 1884, and finally, by President Grover Cleveland in 1894.

Don’t forget to visit the Replacements, Ltd. web site, and e-mail Pinot the Blog Dog and me at ross.howell@replacements.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Ross Howell

Copeland Spode "Chicago Pitcher"

Hello everyone, and best wishes for the New Year from Ross and Pinot the Blog Dog! In spite of the bad economic news, it's been a good holiday season here at Replacements, Ltd.  We hope that soon all of us around the world will see movement toward economic recovery and good times ahead. Pinot received a new collar for Christmas from one of her girlfriends and is very excited. She's prancing around even more than usual!  Recently we had a very interesting e-mail correspondence with a couple who had read our piece about the Grosvenor Merlin china from the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. We hope to have more information about Merlin for you soon.  Here we wanted to share some information about a very cool historical piece in our Replacements, Ltd. Museum.

Copeland Spode Chicago Pitcher

As one would expect from any commemorative piece, our museum feature, the Copeland Spode Chicago Pitcher, released in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, is full of history.  But the particulars of this piece’s release make it something truly special. 

The Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, began as an observance of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World.  Having outdone New York City and Washington, DC, to get the exposition, Chicago went all-out to make it spectacular.  The exposition site covered 600 acres, and nearly 200 buildings, in classical style, were constructed.  Man-made lagoons and canals accented the magnificent buildings.  Often referred to as “The White City,” the exposition was designed in large part by Daniel Burnham (architect who designed the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, DC) and Frederick Law Olmstead (landscape designer of Central Park, New York City, and the grounds around the United States Capitol Building).  The buildings and layout of the exhibition were to serve as prototypes for city design, following the Beaux Arts principles of symmetry and balance.

As fate would have it, a young English teacher from Wellesley College, MA, visited the exposition on her way to Colorado for a tour of the West.  Katharine Lee Bates would later write the poem that would become the patriotic song, America the Beautiful.  The “alabaster cities” in her lyrics are a reference to the white buildings of the Chicago World’s Fair.

Launched in a period of great optimism in industrial America, the exposition was visited by such luminaries as inventor Thomas Edison; activists Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Frederick Douglass; entertainers Scott Joplin and Annie Oakley; financiers J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie; aviator Octave Chanute; writers Henry Adams, Hamlin Garlin, William Dean Howells, and Helen Keller (with her teacher, Annie Sullivan); and President Grover Cleveland.  In the six months that the exposition was open, more than 27 million people attended.  This number represented about half the population of the United States in the period!

Noted on the backstamp of the Copeland Spode Chicago Pitcher as designer is the name, Frank E. Burley, whose business, Burley & Co., was located on State Street in Chicago.  In the “Chicago Blue Book of Selected Names...” (1892), Burley’s firm ran this advertisement: “We bring to this city and offer for sale at reasonable prices, the choicest Table Wares, the richest Ornamental Pieces and the latest novelties in Ceramics secured by personal visit to the Art Centres of the Old World.”  In all likelihood, Burley commissioned the production of the Chicago Pitcher on a business trip to England.  A decade later, the “Annual Report 1903” of the Chicago Historical Society notes a gift “From Burley and Company...an historical pitcher designed by the late Frank E. Burley.  The different groups of figures forming the decorations represent the history of Chicago from the first visit of Marquette, 1673, to the Columbian Exposition, 1893.”

Encircling the top panels of the Copeland Spode Chicago Pitcher is a depiction of the Great Fire of 1871 that destroyed four square miles of the city.  You’ll see in the detail a rendering of Catherine O’Leary, who with her husband, Patrick, owned the small shed where the fire purportedly started, along with her famous cow.  The legend (popularized in the song, “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” sometimes called “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”) continues, even though Michael Ahern, a reporter for the Chicago Republican, admitted in 1893 (the year of the Columbian Exhibition) that he had invented the story about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over her milking lantern.

Other depictions include Potawatomi warriors pointing across a lake, probably at French explorers who were the first white men to arrive in the region.  Also depicted are the area’s first trading post, built by Haitian Jean Baptiste Pont du Sable, the area’s first permanent settler; Fort Dearborn, destroyed during the War of 1812; and a depiction of Athena (goddess of wisdom and knowledge) with the Palace of Fine Arts, also known as the Fine Arts Building (built specifically for the 1893 Columbia Exhibition), which, years later, would evolve into the Field Museum of Natural History, a landmark on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.

While the Copeland Spode Chicago Pitcher in our Museum is not for sale, Replacements, Ltd. carries a wide variety of classic Spode patterns, among them, the most popular china pattern in our entire 13,000,000-piece inventory, Spode Christmas Tree.  Be sure to browse our web site.  And remember that we always invite you to visit our facilities!  Here you’ll find a stunning variety of silver, china, crystal, and collectibles!  Our warehouse facilities (the size of 7 football fields) hold more than 13,000,000 individual pieces in more than 300,000 patterns!  Our Showroom and Museum are open from 9:00am to 7:00pm ET, 7 days a week (except holidays); free tours are available from 9:30am to 6:00pm ET, 7 days a week.  The Showroom and Museum are conveniently located between Greensboro and Burlington, NC, at exit 132 off Interstate 85/40.  We look forward to seeing you!  And remember to e-mail us at ross.howell@replacements.com. 

Ross Howell