Waiters wait for their cue to serve breakfast for a meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at Putin’s dacha outside Moscow, Russia, July 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
For months now, I’ve been trying to write a blog post about my fascination with presidential china. It would have been perfect as a fourth of July post, but that holiday found me up to my curls in cupcakes and picnic baskets, so it flew by in a blur of fireworks without me getting the time to cobble anything together.
The idea for this post came from discovering these beautiful images from the White House’s official Flickr photostream. Politcal beliefs aside, anyone can appreciate the elegance of these place settings. (Well, that is if you’re as strange as I am.)
Photo credits: Left column—Samantha Appleton; Right column—Pete Souza
Plates intrigue me. For someone who cooks, they’re like the canvas to the “painting” of a good meal. At a restaurant, I take note of the plate my food comes on—any plate, even the ones at Maxwell’s, a tiny café in Culver City we like to brunch in on Sundays, where plain white diner ceramic plates are used.
So as I was going through the stream of photos, my foodie’s sense tingled every time I spied a place setting. The photos made me curious: If the president asked you for a snack of his favorite cheese and crackers, what plate would you serve it on?
Photo credit: Pete Souza
Maybe you political junkies already knew this, but I only recently found out that it’s a time-honored tradition for First Ladies to commission the design and production of china for their respective husbands’ terms. Not all administrations have done so and sometimes use those of the previous one’s, but whenever the new sets come in, they’re used for state dinners and the like. A sample of the set is also showcased in the White House’s China Room. (I’ve never had the desire to see The White House before, but now that I know there’s a room full of PLATES in it, I really want to go! Haha.)
Early White House china that was chipped or broken used to be given away, or auctioned off to raise money for the creation of the next set. Congress later passed a law requiring for all presidential china to be kept or destroyed. In fact, when designs for new dessert plates for the Johnson administration didn’t turn out as well as planned, the White House staff dealt with the situation by smashing the plates against a basement wall painted with caricatures of the president’s assistants!
Michelle Obama has yet to move forward with the present administration’s china patterns. She has many beautiful sets to pick from in the meantime, especially because Laura Bush commissioned both informal and formal china sets during her husband’s terms.
Formal Set—”George W. Bush State China”
Photo credit: Ron Edmonds, Associated Press
Informal set—”Magnolia Residence China,” inspired by a magnolia tree on the White House grounds believed to be the oldest botanical resident on the White House grounds
Photo credit: Ron Edmonds, Associated Press
And these are my favorite plates from previous administrations. (Photos courtesy of Whitehousemuseum.org.)
Clockwise, these plates were from the administrations of: Franklin Pierce, John Quincy Adams, Ronald Reagan and Thomas Jefferson
And so, after going through tons of online resources and researching White House history, I’ve finally written my presidential plates post (alliterate much?)! Did I bore you? Are you snoozing? Haha. I feel that this obsession of mine is highly specialized (read: odd), but I’ve always been fascinated with how much food is a part of a country’s history, and that naturally extends to the story behind the vessels the food was served in. Who knows what kinds of conversations these plates have heard and seen?
I hope your own plates, even if they don’t have the presidential seal emblazoned on them, are filled with good food that inspire great memories every day. 
J. | 
11 5th, 2009| 
