James Madison's Montpelier We The People Fall 2015 | Page 13

FALL 2015

Rhinoceros Horn Walking Stick, 1805

Covered Soup Tureen, Nast Porcelain, 1806
I love this tureen because it represents for me
the excitement of domestic style in early federal
Washington, D.C. Here was the still-fledgling
American government taking up residence in
its newly created home city, and people like
Jefferson and the Madisons were figuring out
what the city would look like and how people
would live in it.
This soup tureen—with its distinctive, bold
geometric decoration and salmon-colored
glaze—would have been the height of fashion
when the Madisons acquired it during James’s
tenure as Secretary of State. The tureen is one
of only a few surviving pieces of the Madisons’
large service—it included 231 pieces. Would
you have expected Dolley Madison to have
231 pieces of orange-colored porcelain? Only
32 pieces are known today; four are in the
Montpelier collection.

This walking stick actually has
an association with both James
Madison and his friend Thomas
Jefferson. In 1805, during his
presidency, Jefferson received a
gift of a rhinoceros horn walking
stick from John F. Oliveira
Fernandes. He told Jefferson:
“It was my hope that your Love
of Natural Philosophy would
render so rare a production of the
Animal Kingdom acceptable to
you. While it might be an usefull
[sic] companion in your retired & rural excursions
at Monticello.”
Upon his death on July 4, 1826, Jefferson willed
the walking stick to Madison. After it arrived
at Montpelier, Madison wrote to Jefferson’s
grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, “The Article
bequeathed to me by your Grandfather, had been
... received with all the feelings due to such a token
of the place I held in the friendship of one, whom
I so much revered & loved, when living, and whose
memory can never cease to be dear to me.”
Jefferson and Madison shared an interest in
“natural philosophy,” which we would call science,
and this object, at once a personal possession and
an unusual specimen of the natural world, served as
a symbolic token of a special friendship.

Mantel in Dolley’s Bedchamber
The mantel in Dolley Madison’s bedchamber, one
of the most elaborate in the Montpelier house,
dates to the 1809-12 additions carried out by
James Dinsmore and John Neilson, highly skilled
craftsmen who worked for Jefferson for over a
decade before relocating to Montpelier following
Monticello’s completion in 1809.
The central decoration on the mantel is an
allegorical figure representing Plenty, but I

especially like the classical vases on either side.
This shape for me is really evocative of the early
federal period in American history. Early Americans
favored ancient design in architectural ornament
and other areas. For them, the ancient world
represented democratic and republica