When Mrs. Lincoln arrived at the White House in 1861 she found the pantry sadly deficient in elegant tableware to set a State dinner. The last official State service had been purchased by the White House during the administration of President Franklin Pierce (it is the china known popularly as the “red edge” set), and not enough of that was left to serve a large dinner party.
Theodore R. Davis, who designed the State china purchased during the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes, wrote an article, published in the May 1899 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, on the “Presidential Porcelain of a Century.” He records that in 1860 he saw the State Dining Room of the White House set up for the formal dinner given for the visiting Prince of Wales, and that “the dishes were more or less odd, but generally comprised what was known as the ‘red edge set’.”
Chinaware was not the only thing needed in the Executive Mansion in the opinion of Mary Todd Lincoln. Fortunately for her, Congress was accustomed to appropriating $20,000 to refurnish the President’s House to the taste of each new First Lady. This money became available to her when the special session was convened in April 1861, and Mrs. Lincoln set out the next month on a shopping trip to New York and Philadelphia. She was accompanied by a favorite cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, who had come to Washington for the inauguration in March and stayed on at the White House with the Lincolns for six months.
The ladies’ arrival in New York City on May 12, was duly noted in the city newspaper. On May 16, 1861, The New York Daily Tribune records under the heading Personal:
Mrs. Lincoln employed the greater portion of Wednesday forenoon in making purchases. Among other places she visited the establishments of Lord & Taylor, and Messrs. E. V. Haughwout and 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. The purchases also include some handsome vases and mantle ornaments for the blue and green rooms.
The firm of E. V. Haughwout and Co. whose bill head identifies it as “Importers and Decorators of French China” was accustomed to Executive Mansion patronage. Under the name of Haughwout and Dailey they had sold a dinner service to President Pierce in 1853.[1] During Mrs. Lincoln’s May visit, Haughwout’s must have shown her a handsome specimen plate they had exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York in 1853 which had been made for President Pierce’s approval. A picture of the plate in the Haughwout and Dailey display is shown in the catalog of the Exhibition where it is identified as “a specimen plate of a dinner service manufactured for the President of the United States with the American eagle and blue band in Alhambra style.”[2] President Pierce evidently did not like the design as the service he subsequently purchased from Haughwout and Dailey had a plain red band and was not the one manufactured for his approval and exhibited in New York.
Figure 2.—Plate illustrated in the catalog of the Crystal Palace Exhibition, 1853. (Smithsonian photo 60016.)
Mary Todd Lincoln was delighted with the plate displayed at the Crystal Palace Exhibition and ordered a complete dinner service of that design. Her only change was to have a wide “Solferino” border painted on the service instead of the blue border specified for the 1853 plate. This bright purplish-red color had become extremely fashionable since its discovery in 1859, and it provided another variation of Mrs. Lincoln’s favorite color, which she indulged in personal attire as well as in room decor.
