CIRCA 1800-1810

The so-called "Fitzhugh" patterns, named after the English family who ordered a blue and white service with this distinctive decoration about 1780, became particularly popular in America, the grandest made in more unusual colors and displaying the national emblem of the new republic. The orange Fitzhugh group on these pages, made for some prosperous patriot as-yet-unidentified and initialed BLP, came to Peter Frelinghuysen from his mother, Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen (1884-1963). Adaline, daughter of famed painting collector Louisine Havemeyer, was drawn to the decorative arts (like her sister, Electra Havemeyer Webb, part of the Americana collecting vanguard and founder of the Shelburne Museum). Mary Cassatt wrote to her friend Louisine, "Adaline was sure to collect she is her Father's daughter & yours" (A C Frelinghuysen et al, Splendid Legacy, p 111). Adaline bought this Fitzhugh at the 1921 American Art Association sale of the distinguished philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence's property, "including his celebrated private collection of Chinese Lowestoft porcelain".