Winterthur Curator's Salon Offers Close Look at George Washington's Society of the Cincinnati Porcelain

Key facts

• Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library hosts a curator's salon on September 13 focused on George Washington's Society of the Cincinnati dinner service
• The program runs from 2 to 4:30 p.m. and requires advance reservations due to limited capacity
• Luke Pecoraro, Winterthur's newly appointed curator of ceramics and glass and former director of archaeology at Mount Vernon, leads the salon
• The service was commissioned by Samuel Shaw, the first American merchant to trade with China, and Washington procured its 302 pieces in 1786
• The Society of the Cincinnati was formed three years earlier by officers of the American Revolution
• The central decoration depicts the figure of Fame holding the society's badge against a blue border picked out in gold
• Henry Francis du Pont assembled 74 pieces for Winterthur, which holds the largest surviving group in any collection
• A circa-1785 plate sold this June at Boston auction house Grogan & Company for $137,500 against a $30,000 to $50,000 estimate
• An example offered at Christie's in 2013 brought $98,500
• Pecoraro will share new research into the whereabouts of the service's missing pieces