A family collection of Asian art - Current and Coming - at Tudor Place, Washington D.C - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, May, 2002 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Tudor Place was built to the designs of the great architect William Thornton in the Georgetown section of the District of Columbia, in 1816 for Thomas and Martha Custis Peter Martha Peter was the namesake of her grandmother Martha Washington, and she often visited Mount Vernon in nearby Virginia. When Martha Washington died in 1802, Thomas and Martha Custis Peter purchased at the Mount Vernon estate sale a large quantity of Chinese export porcelains and other objects that had been owned by the Washingtons.

Tudor Place was occupied by six generations of the Peter family, and two of them strengthened family ties to the house by marrying cousins. One year after the death of Armistead Peter III in 1983, the house became part of a foundation and in 1988 was opened to the public as a house museum. He and his wife Caroline were responsible for restoring the house and adding objects they felt were appropriate for a building of this period and reflected the taste of its former occupants.

Armistead Peter III was also an admirer of things Asian and added decorative and fine arts to the collection, some of which he purchased in Japan in 1945 and 1963. Fortunately, there is extensive documentation of the purchases made by family members over more than 175 years. Many of these documents are on view in an exhibition at Tudor Place that focuses on the family's collection of Asian art. Entitled Asian Arts at Tudor Place: An American Passion to Collect, the show is on view until December 31. It comprises more than seventy objects, including porcelains, paintings, watercolors, furniture, bronzes, screens, and jewelry. The quality of the objects varies from a late eighteenth-century porcelain soup plate with the emblem of the Society of the Cincinnati (of which George Washington was a member) owned by the Washingtons to souvenirs such as fans and costume accessories acquired on trips to Asia in the twentieth century. In sum, this show takes a very personal look at the taste of generations of an American family with an august lineage dating back to our first president.

There is no catalogue of this exhibition.