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!

Resolute desk

Time has a really nice photo of the Resolute desk plaque.

Art question

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.
Could you please give me this information?

Update: He got a reply back from Hillary Crehan of the WHHA that...

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.

CBS at the White House

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?

CNN has the best WH holiday pictures I've seen so far.

Bear chair

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....

Who is WHAT?

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.

Sofas

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Any reason the Monroe era sofa in the Blue Room has been replaced by the McKim, Mead, and White sofa?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.

Oval Office rug mouse pads

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.

I've added pics of the Reagan and Bush 2 rugs and improved the Clinton one, but the quality isn't the best (the Bush rug is really Pete's repro). I had inquired with the National Archives a year ago about photos of OO rugs and got an ambivalent response, but no follow-up.

Open post: mantelpieces

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.)

Resolute desk question

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 are

1. If the plaque is no longer there..where is it? who had it removed and why?

and

2. Why is the plaque on different sides of the desk depending on the photo?

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.

Bellangé bergère

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.

I added a capture of the black and white image from that article, but it would be nice to have a good color picture of the chair as it is today, so be on the lookout.

With the thoughts I'd be thinkin'...

I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a Lincoln Bedroom, with matching Lincoln bed.

Treaty Room

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.

Directions...

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.

As a corporate training consultant, I’m also considering how to turn the site into more of a structured educational experience, with teaching aids and quizzes or whatever, so teachers can use it directly in their history lessons.