The president's call button
Time has graciously served up a nice photo of the president's call button, under discussion here recently. Thanks Brooks Kraft!

Labels: furnishings, West Wing
The Oval OfficeThe weblog for the White House Museum at whitehousemuseum.org. |
Time has graciously served up a nice photo of the president's call button, under discussion here recently. Thanks Brooks Kraft!

Labels: furnishings, West Wing
Océano Pablo Navarro from Spain writes:I found the enclosed picture of the Reagans with Prince Charles and Lady Diana in the Yellow Oval Room [actually the West Sitting Hall] and though I've searched all the web, I couldn't know who is the painter of the impressionist beach scene hanging on the wall.Update: He got a reply back from Hillary Crehan of the WHHA that...
Could you please give me this information?
The painting in the image is entitled: At the Seaside by Edward Potthast. This painting was borrowed from a private collection and is shown hanging in the West Sitting Hall.
Labels: furnishings, history
CBS has a video interview with Laura Bush about the holiday decor. Hannah Storm: "Now I'm off to a Harper's Bazaar photo shoot -- with cardboard cutouts of the candidates!" How will she tell?
Labels: furnishings
I stumbled across a page with some information about the fantastic grizzly bear chair that Andrew Johnson had in the his library (the Yellow Oval Room).Made from two grizzly bears captured by Seth [Kinman]. The four legs and claws were those of a huge grizzly and the back and sides ornamented with immense claws. The seat was soft and exceedingly comfortable, but the great feature of the chair was that, by touching a cord, the head of the monster grizzly bear with jaws extended, would dart out in front from under the seat, snapping and gnashing its teeth as natural as life. This chair Seth presented to [President] Johnson, September 8, 1865.Yes, the head would dart out from underneath... natural as life....
Labels: furnishings, history
Portfolio Art Blog notes that the White House Acquisition Trust bought The Builders (Jacob Lawrence, 1947) for the Green Room for $2.5 mill. Who is WHAT? Wikipedia says its a fund for buying stuff for the WH and is worth $8.5 mill, or was until recently.
Labels: furnishings
Joe asks:
Any reason the Monroe era sofa in the Blue Room has been replaced by the McKim, Mead, and White sofa? And if so what happened to the earlier sofa?I don't know of a reason, so we might put it down to taste. And sometimes furniture is switched so it can be repaired or reupholstered. I don't think the Monroe sofa would be put anywhere else.
Labels: furnishings, Residence
After I mentioned it on the Facebook discussion about WH product wish-lists, I traded a couple of notes with a contact from MouseRug about the possibility of them creating mouse pads of the Oval Office rugs. They're going to look into it.Labels: furnishings, West Wing
Feel free to comment on the history of mantels thruout the White House. (And feel free to spell it "mantle" if you like; I obviously thoroly approve of alternative spellings.)
Labels: furnishings, open post
Allen L asks about the Resolute desk:
In some photos of the desk througout history there is a plaque on it. In some photos its on the front of the desk and in some its on the back (where someone would be seated) and now it doesn't seem to be there at all. My questions are1. If the plaque is no longer there..where is it? who had it removed and why?and2. Why is the plaque on different sides of the desk depending on the photo?
Labels: furnishings
Added a separate page for the china collection and linked to it from the furnishings page, where I also added an entry for Stuart's stony-jawed (or hippo-jawed, as the case may be) Washington.
Labels: furnishings
Patrick P writes about the Monroe-era bergère chair in the Blue Room, noting that pic I have on that page is outdated now, since the chair has since been reupholstered properly with a separate cushion (as seen here). He offers a link to this interesting article on the subject. I'm adding a page for it.Labels: furnishings
I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a Lincoln Bedroom, with matching Lincoln bed.
Labels: furnishings, Residence
I overhauled the text of the Treaty Room and added some pics of the furnishings and a good one of the actual treaty signing that gave it its name. I'm continuing to add to the Furnishings pages, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
Labels: furnishings, Residence
As the site grows, I’m trying to decide how best to present information without it becoming overwhelming. The White House site divides their room coverage into “Life in the Red Room” and “Red Room Art and Furnishings” and so on. But this seems kind of awkward to me, especially since pieces get moved around from one administration to the next. The White House site is mainly concerned with the rooms as they are today, with smatterings of history to make it interesting, whereas I want to allow people to see how the White House has changed over the decades. Still, the old Cabinet table with locking drawers currently in the Treaty Room is perfectly worthy of a bit of attention on its own, let alone the Lincoln bed and Resolute desk.
Labels: education, furnishings