Donation from Betsee Parker Completes A Set of Custis Silver At Mount Vernon

Donation from Betsee Parker Completes A Set of Custis Silver At Mount Vernon

By Adam Erby

A new exhibition at George Washington’s Mount Vernon includes 30-plus pieces of Custis family silver as part of “The Story of an American Icon.” This collection is now complete thanks to a donation from Betsee Parker of Huntland in Middleburg.

The donation is a two-part English silver wine funnel, ordered by George Washington for his stepson, John Parke Custis, in 1884. “ I’m hoping this gift will stimulate others to remember Mount Vernon,” said Betsee, who also donated a spoon.

Custis wine funnel (top and bottom right) Made by John Carter II London, 1774-1775 Donated to Mount Vernon

By Betsee Parker

As the American colonies moved toward independence in the 1770s, British consumers experienced a revolution of their own, a revolution in style.

Fueled by recent archaeological discoveries in the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, London designers adopted a more severe classical aesthetic that embraced simplicity, symmetry, and the repetition of simple design motifs while rejecting the fanciful exuberance, natural forms, and asymmetry of the French rococo.

When Martha Washington’s only son, John “Jacky” Parke Custis, married Eleanor Calvert, the couple likely wrote to London requesting a silver service in the latest style to furnish their tea table, dining table, and sideboard. The extraordinary service they received fully embraced the new aesthetic, known today as neoclassicism.

London silversmith John Carter supplied a “Tea Kitchen,” or hot water urn, which became the centerpiece of Eleanor Custis’s tea table. The piece is a tour-de-force of the silversmiths’ art, carefully hammered and raised from small, flat ingots of silver to form the elements of the body, which the artisan then soldered together to form the whole.

Custis tea kitchen or hot water urn Made by John Carter II London, 1774-1775 Purchase, 1932

The silversmith made the piece in the form of a classical urn, a type of vase often fitted with a cover, which was one of the central design motifs of the neoclassical era. In keeping with the restrained style, the body is entirely symmetrical and largely devoid of decoration when compared to its predecessors. Beyond the repeated rows of reeding and beading, the carefully engraved Custis coat-ofarms and crest serves as the main form of decoration, marking both the couple’s ownership of the piece and their aristocratic bearings.

Jacky and Eleanor Custis were early adopters of the neoclassical style in America, and their silver service is one of the largest and most important markers of this stylistic shift surviving from colonial America. After the Revolutionary War, Americans enthusiastically embraced the new style, just as they began to set up their own government. Americans combined the English style with their own symbols to form a style often known today as federal.

Adam Erby is curator of fine and decorative arts at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.