American Art History Digitally

sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art

From Zuni to Dupont Circle: Isabel and Larz Anderson’s Native American CollectionInteractive Feature

Scholarly Article|Interactive Feature|Project Narrative

This digital component, with the aid of floor plans and photographs, offers a virtual tour that approximates the path and experience of guests who came to Anderson House in Washington, DC, in the early decades of the twentieth century for an evening dinner party of about twelve to fourteen couples, including Isabel Weld Perkins (1876–1948) and Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866–1937). The house offered a succession of rooms that guests moved through over the course of an evening’s entertainments, from arrival to greetings to having cocktails to dinner and then, finally, to after-dinner coffee, cordials, and conversation, accompanied by live music. Each room presented guests with a different ambience and a different experience of design, lighting, and, most importantly, art and other objects from the Andersons’ collections, displayed prominently in carefully planned, eclectic installations that served as hallmarks of their cosmopolitan identity. In each room, particular objects made reference to both the Andersons’ Anglo-European ancestry and their travels to places with what they regarded as exotic cultures. The tour begins on the ground floor with several rooms used for arrival and gathering before ascending the main stairs to the piano nobile (literally “noble floor”; the principal floor of a large house), where greetings and introductions as well as cocktails and dinner took place, and then culminates in a return to the ground floor where a series of rooms offered spaces for after-dinner entertainment. The only representation of a Native American person appeared in the mural on the ceiling of the Cincinnati (or Key) Room where guests were greeted by the Andersons, and Native American pottery was displayed in the Saloon, the Winter Garden, and the Billiard Room, all spaces used for after-dinner entertainment.

Anderson House, located at 2118 Massachusetts Avenue NW, in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, was the winter home of Isabel and Larz Anderson. It was designed by the Boston firm of Arthur Little (1852–1925) and Herbert W. C. Browne (1860–1946) starting around 1901, and construction began in 1902 and was completed in 1905. The house comprised forty-five thousand square feet and ninety-five rooms, including bathrooms, storage, and service areas. Its total cost, including land and outbuilding, was $838,000 (approximately $25.3 million in 2023). The Andersons took occupancy of the house in March 1905, several years before its furnishing and decorating were completed.

As guests arrived for a dinner party, they were dropped off under the portico and ushered through the mansion’s broad, paneled door into the Entrance Hall.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Entrance Hall in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Object view

Entrance Hall Buddha in its outdoor setting in 2013, Anderson House, Washington. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Photograph courtesy of Bruce Guthrie.

This piece is described in the inventory of 1911 as “1 Old bronze statue of Buddha seated in lotus blossom, right hand raised in benediction; halo decorated with figures in relief. Inscriptions on costume. . . . Perfect.”‍[8] It measures 90 x 40 in. (229 x 102 cm), and in 1910 sat on a block base 52 in. (132 cm) square. The base was redesigned for its later move to an outdoor installation in the garden by the Society of the Cincinnati, as seen in this photograph. Larz described the purchase of this object in the inventory: “After having unsuccessfully sought a bronze Buddha while on trips to Japan in 1888 and 1897[.] This one was acquired from Mssrs. [A. A.] Vantine in 1903.”‍[9] By 1903, Vantine was a well-established New York dealer for Japanese antiques and handicrafts.

The front Entrance Hall, known during the Anderson era as the Lobby, provided arriving guests with their first view of the interior of the house. At the time of Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photograph in 1910, the Entrance Hall was furnished and decorated sparsely with fewer than a dozen items that allude to the Andersons’ interest in and travel to Asia and Europe: religious objects from Japan and India and wooden seating from Holland and Italy.

Show more

The focal point of the Entrance Hall’s décor was a large bronze Buddha statue (90 x 40 in. [228.6 x 101.6 cm]) directly opposite the front door that greeted visitors on their arrival and announced that Anderson House would be unlike anything else they had experienced in Washington. In Boston, where Isabel grew up, the presence of such an object in an upper-class home would have had no such surprising effect on visitors, given that there was much interest in Japan, Japanese art, and Buddhism among Boston elites and intellectuals.‍[6] In Washington, however, the statue was controversial and elicited some derision. The East Coast society rag, Town Topics, in a piece published around the time the Buddha was installed, referred to it disrespectfully as an example of “the fad for the false god Billiken” and accused Isabel of being vague about its provenance because it was rumored among “several society matrons” to have been acquired in Hoboken, New Jersey.‍[7]

In the Entrance Hall, Asian and European art and furnishings were displayed with equal emphasis in a space that is neoclassical in design. The Entrance Hall’s symmetry and proportions, and its geometric and classical decorative elements, suggest an Italian inspiration for the space, such as a private chapel in a palazzo or villa. The Andersons could have successfully installed classical Greek and Roman sculpture or Christian art in keeping with the architectural setting but chose instead to juxtapose the Western, neoclassical architectural frame of this room with Asian religious art, an “East meets West” theme replicated throughout the house.

After arriving in the Entrance Hall, guests would turn to the right and walk straight ahead into the Choir Stall Room (see floor plan) through the door flanked by two bronze Japanese-temple lanterns.

Left: Plan of the ground floor of Anderson House redrawn by Harry I. Martin III in 2015 from the original Little and Browne blueprints in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image © Stephen T. Moskey.

Right: Little and Browne (architecture firm), Entrance Hall looking west into the public side of the house in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Choir Stall Room looking east in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Object view

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Choir Stall Room looking east in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

This room was lit by what Larz called an “old Italian silver font-shape sanctuary lamp with pear-shape pendant of embossed figures and flutes” that was “fitted to electricity with Baccarat bead globe.”‍[12] On the south wall of the room, two electrified, Venetian gilded-polychrome torches with kneeling angels holding candlesticks provided supplemental illumination for the paintings above. These torches were acquired from the firm of Edward F. Caldwell & Company of New York, known for providing both antique and custom-designed lighting fixtures to numerous US churches, public buildings, and residences, including the White House.‍[13]

Harry Siddons Mowbray, Murals on the ceiling and frieze of the Choir Stall Room, 1908–9, with additions through ca. 1920, in 2013. Oil on canvas and fresco. Anderson House, Washington. Artwork in the public domain; photograph courtesy of Bruce Guthrie.

This photograph shows a view of the ceiling and east-end frieze with modern illumination. The emblems on the frieze above the paneling, from left to right, are the Order of the Crown of Japan; Military Order of the Spanish-American War; and Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy. The ceiling includes small cartouches and squares displaying the seals of Phillips Exeter Academy and of Harvard College, where Larz was educated, and the signal of the Andersons’ houseboat, the S. S. Roxana.

In the Andersons’ time, the Choir Stall Room was also called the Ante-Camera Stall Room or sometimes the Inner Hall. Serving as a transitional space between the Entrance Hall and the Great Stairs Hall and continuing the ecclesiastical character of the entry space, it was fitted with carved walnut paneling that had been removed from an unidentified church in Italy. The Andersons acquired the panels in 1905 from the antiquarian firm of E. & C. Canessa in Naples, Italy.‍[10]

Show more

Starting around 1908, the walls and the ceiling above the woodwork were decorated by the US muralist Harry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928) with painted cartouches, emblems, and figures representing the Andersons’ membership in US and foreign patriotic and honorary organizations, and Larz’s educational background. Additions continued at least until 1920, when Isabel was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for her service during World War I in France as a volunteer Red Cross nurse.

This was a well-illuminated area where arriving guests could pause and consider what the Andersons regarded as their many achievements and honors, both domestic and (especially) international. These included, for Isabel, the Society of the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the French Croix de Guerre; and for Larz, the Military Order of the Spanish War, Commander of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazare of Italy, and the medal of the Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard.‍[11]

This photograph of 2015 taken from the west end of the Choir Stall Room shows that the complexity and ornateness of the Italian woodwork and lighting fixtures harmonized with the complexity and lustrous painted surfaces of the ceiling and frieze above.

This room, known in the Andersons’ time as the Main Staircase Hall or the Great Stairs Hall, was an area where guests could remove their coats and get ready to make their way to activities on the piano nobile above (see floor plan).

Plan of the ground floor of Anderson House redrawn by Harry I. Martin III in 2015 from the original Little and Browne blueprints in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image © Stephen T. Moskey.

One of the main architectural features of the Great Stairs Hall is the six columns that recall the nave of a church or cathedral, furthering the ecclesiastical character of the space already evident with the confessional, the pulpit, and other pieces of church furniture in the room. In the inventory of 1911, Larz emphasized this connection to church architecture when he noted that, as shown in this photograph, the columns were sometimes draped in “old Spanish rose color velvet panels” as was often done in Spanish churches “on ceremonial occasions.”‍[18] This ecclesiastical reference is also continued in the arrangement of several statues of Christian female saints, the Madonna and Child, and female divines placed on pedestals and bases in front of columns, an arrangement that suggests the placement of statuary throughout a church sanctuary for devotional purposes.

Mexican confessional chair Lord Shiva and His Wife Parvati Pulpit Figure of a female divine, possibly Saint Margaret St. Anne Holding the Madonna and Child on Her Knee Crowned Madonna and Child

Little and Browne (architecture firm), East wall of the Great Stairs Hall with seventeenth-century Mexican confessional chair and murals by Oreste Paltrinieri in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Mexican confessional chair

Larz acquired this “Mexican carved walnut confessional chair” (location unknown) from the early seventeenth-century Córdoba Cathedral in Mexico. In his inventory of 1911, he notes that he obtained it directly from a priest at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Córdoba, “in exchange for a contribution to the repair of the church” that the bishop had approved.‍[24] The piece measures 108 x 72 in. (274 x 183 cm). The Andersons hung a framed postcard of the cathedral on the front of the confessional to document its provenance. Though the confessional may seem out of place in these secular surroundings, its decoration harmonizes with that of the Great Stairs Hall. In particular, the shield at the top of the confessional incorporates a stars-and-stripes design that recalls the US flag and the themes of war and patriotism in the nearby murals.

Indian sculptor once known, Lord Shiva and His Wife Parvati, 19th century, in 2023. Marble. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Artwork in the public domain; photograph by Stephen T. Moskey.

Lord Shiva and His Wife Parvati

Larz described this piece as a “Hindoo antique stone idol” acquired from Watson and Company in Bombay (now Mumbai) on the Andersons’ wedding trip to India in 1899.‍[25] It measures 31 x 18 in. (79 x 46 cm). The placement of this object at a geometrically central position in a space otherwise dominated by Christian liturgical objects suggests that Larz wished to highlight both its similarity to other pieces (religious statues) and differences from those same pieces (Hindu versus Christian, male versus female). It is now displayed on the floor in the Gallery of the piano nobile at Anderson House.

Unidentified Flemish sculptor, figure of a female divine, possibly Saint Margaret, possibly early 17th century, in 2000. Polychromed wood. Location unknown. Artwork in the public domain; photograph courtesy of Sloan’s Auctioneers & Appraisers, North Bethesda, MD.

Figure of a female divine,
possibly Saint Margaret

The inventory of 1911 identifies this object as an “Old Spanish” statue that the Andersons acquired in Madrid in 1906. Larz thought this statue might have been of Saint Margaret, a saint venerated in the Anglican Communion, of which he was a member.‍[27] When the item was deaccessioned by the Society of the Cincinnati in 2000, a Sloan’s appraiser identified it as possibly early seventeenth-century Flemish.

Spanish sculptor once known, Crowned Madonna and Child, ca. 13th–15th century, in 2018. Unpainted walnut. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Artwork in the public domain; photograph by Stephen T. Moskey.

Crowned Madonna and Child

The 1911 inventory describes this piece as an “old Spanish carved walnut figure of a crowned Madonna and Child.” In a handwritten notation, Larz further describes it as an example of “Spanish Gothic carving,” which thus dates it to circa thirteenth-to-fifteenth century. The Andersons acquired this statue on a trip to Madrid in 1906.‍[30] During the Anderson era, it was displayed in the Great Stairs Hall in juxtaposition with the Lord Shiva and His Wife Parvati sculpture, setting up a dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), West wall of the Great Stairs Hall, with pulpit attributed to Andrea Riccio, in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Pulpit

The Andersons acquired this carved walnut pulpit (height: 144 in. [289.56 cm]; location unknown) in Florence in 1899. According to Larz, it was “supposed to be the work of [the Italian Renaissance sculptor, Andrea] Riccio [1470–1532].”‍[26] It is supported by kneeling angels and includes statues of disciples and bishops as well as panels representing scenes from the life of Christ.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Detail of Great Stairs Hall in 1910 showing sculpture of St. Anne Holding the Madonna and Child on Her Knee, Anderson House, Washington. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

St. Anne Holding the Madonna and Child on Her Knee

In the 1911 inventory, this sculpture, which the Andersons acquired on a trip to Madrid in 1906, is catalogued as an “old Spanish Mexican carved wood gilt and polychrome group of St. Anne holding on [her] knee [the] Madonna and Child.”‍[28] In a handwritten notation, Larz explained, “it is only in Spain that are found groups including the Christ Child, his mother and grandmother.”‍[29] During the Anderson era, it was placed in the Great Stairs Hall at the bottom of the staircase on the opposite side from the Crowned Madonna and Child, and it, too, contributed to the dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism in this room.

The staircase leading from the Great Stairs Hall to the piano nobile was then, as now, dominated by the massive painting The Triumph of the Dogaressa (1882–93) by José Villegas Cordero (Spanish, 1844–1921). It measures 192 x 295 in. (488 x 749 cm) framed and fills almost the entire wall on the landing. It depicts the end of a yearlong celebration, from 1423 to 1424, of the coronation of the 65th Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari (1373–1457), and his wife, the Dogaressa Marina Nani (ca. 1400–73). The painting’s brilliant colors and the ceremonial splendor of its subject helped set the stage for an evening at Anderson House.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Northeast corner of the Key Room in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Object view

Harry Siddons Mowbray, Apotheosis of the Spirit of the Cincinnati, 1908, in 2013. Plaster with oil paint. Anderson House, Washington. Artwork in the public domain; photograph courtesy of Bruce Guthrie.

Larz called the ceiling murals by US artist Harry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928) “an Apotheosis of the Spirit of the Cincinnati.”‍[33] In addition to two large, central medallions depicting a Triumphant Republic and the Genius of the Cincinnati, four blue-and-white panels in high relief portray scenes from US history, including one that represents a Native American titled “The Pioneers.”

The Pioneers Panel

Harry Siddons Mowbray, The Pioneers, 1908, in 2013. Plaster medallion with oil paint. Anderson House, Washington. Artwork in the public domain; photograph courtesy of Bruce Guthrie.

Click to return to

Ceiling murals

One of the four blue-and-white panels represents two white settlers seated in a canoe adjacent to the shore and a Native American standing next to a tree nearby. The subject of the panel is identified in the inventory of 1911 as “The Pioneers” and is described as “Symbolizing the Exploration and Settlement of the Country and the Contact of the Red and White Races.”‍[34] This is the only decorative element from the Anderson era referencing Native American culture or history currently on display in Anderson House. The Native American appears as a primitivized, native type, wearing only a feathered headdress and a loincloth. His standing pose, with his right leg on the ground, his left leg still in the canoe, and his left hand resting on a tree trunk suggests that he may be portrayed as a scout or guide who has shared his mode of travel (the canoe) with the pioneers, facilitating the white men’s exploration and settlement rather than impeding it. The three men appear as a unit, a peaceful group with their weapons lowered and pointed away from each other. This panel conforms to the version of US history advanced by the white elite during this period that co-opts Native Americans and their culture in the figuring of white national identity in the United States. In this ceiling panel, the Native American and the pioneers together constitute the white nation’s foundations: as ethnic studies scholar Shari Huhndorf contends, “Although white America was literally built on the destruction of Native America, the stories European Americans told about themselves as the [nineteenth] century drew to a close also depended on the symbolic resurrection of the Indian as the originary figure of the nation.”‍[35]

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Key Room looking north into the Great Stairs Hall in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Harry Siddons Mowbray, Detail of The Society of the Cincinnati Was Instituted in Peace After Revolution, 1909, in 2015. Oil on canvas. Anderson House, Washington. Artwork in the public domain; photograph by Bruce M. White, 2015.

These photographs show one of four historically themed murals in the Key Room that were executed in 1909 by US artist Harry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928). Entitled The Society of the Cincinnati Was Instituted in Peace After Revolution, it provides an allegorical scene of the founding of the society: President George Washington presents a diploma of membership to the Marquis de Lafayette, while other US Revolutionary military officers stand grouped around the dais. Larz’s great-grandfather Col. Richard Clough Anderson (1750–1826) is depicted in the scene, as is Isabel Anderson, who was the model for the winged personification of Peace seen peeking out from the top right edge of the color photograph, above the allegorical representation of War in a gold helmet.

Harry Siddons Mowbray, Detail of The Order of the Loyal Legion Was Born out of Cruel Civil War, 1909, in 1910. Oil on canvas. Anderson House, Washington. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Harry Siddons Mowbray, The Order of the Loyal Legion Was Born out of Cruel Civil War, 1909. Oil on canvas. Anderson House, Washington. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Artwork in the public domain; available from The Society of the Cincinnati Museum Database.

These photographs show one of four historically themed murals in the Key Room that were executed in 1909 by US artist Harry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928). Located on the south wall of the room, this scene entitled The Order of the Loyal Legion Was Born out of Cruel Civil War portrays the development of the US Civil War from a Northern perspective, supported by the Andersons. The right side of the mural presents an event that marked the outbreak of the war: the Union-held Fort Sumpter, under the command of Larz’s great-uncle, Major Robert Anderson (1805–71), burns in Charleston harbor following an attack by Confederate forces on April 12, 1861. The central group depicts the South preparing to do battle with the North in an allegorical manner: a female figure signifying the South with a cotton branch in her arm raises her sword to a floating male figure symbolizing “War Bursting Forth” while the Republic, identified by the shield bearing a Union emblem, extends his left arm as though to hinder her. The left side of the mural represents the success of the North and its aims: Union troops led by Larz’s father, Colonel Nicholas Longworth Anderson (1838–92), march triumphantly to battle in the South, and an enslaved Black man is freed from his shackles by a white angel of Peace, representing the North’s goal of emancipation.‍[36]

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Northeast corner of the Key Room in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Japanese lacquerware, late 19th–early 20th century, on display in the Key Room of Anderson House in 2023. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Photograph by Stephen T. Moskey.

Detail of the lambrequin of one of the two Georgian-style console tables with box cabinet tops in the Key Room of Anderson House in 2023, used to display Japanese lacquerware. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Photograph by Stephen T. Moskey.

This view shows two of the Key Room’s three tables (each 32 x 67 in. [82 x 170 cm]), surmounted by vitrines (16 x 67 in. [41 x 170 cm]) lined with green baize, where the Andersons displayed pieces of their Japanese lacquerware collection many of which were acquired in Japan on their honeymoon there in 1897. The collection included several paired boxes, one for writing utensils and one for paper.‍[37] The Georgian-style tables are decorated with lambrequins comprised of “carved basket[s] of flowers hung with two swags”‍[38] that complemented the floral imagery on the lacquerware and the “radiating acanthus leaves” on the circular, carved-and-gilded wood “electric candelabra”‍[39] (diameter: 40 in. [102 cm]) that hung from the center of the ceiling. Both the repeating natural motifs and the glossy surfaces of the objects and the murals would have visually unified the otherwise disparate contents of this room.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Detail of the Key Room looking north into the Great Stairs Hall in 1910 showing Kannon sculpture, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

A large (height: 72 in. [183 cm]) Japanese bronze statue of Kannon (location unknown), the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion, standing in a lotus leaf, stood on the right side of the window in the southwest corner of the Key Room. Isabel appears to have understood the spiritual significance of Kannon in Buddhism, and devoted two pages of her book The Spell of Japan to the story of this goddess. She noted that Kannon was “often compared to the Christian Madonna,” thus articulating a cross-cultural connection between these female Buddhist and Christian divines.‍[40]

At the top of the grand staircase, guests entered a reception area called the Key Room, a reference to the Greek meander or key design of its marble floor. The Andersons also sometimes called it the Cincinnati Room, a reference to the wall murals depicting the founding of the Society of the Cincinnati and the early history of the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a painted ceiling that Larz dubbed “an Apotheosis of the Cincinnati.” The Key Room was the anteroom to the entire piano nobile. It was here that the Andersons and their guests of honor greeted guests arriving from the floor below, and they were reminded of Larz’s family’s contribution to the early history of the United States and the founding of the Society of the Cincinnati.

Show more

Painted by US artist Harry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928) in 1908–9, the ceiling mural in this room depicts “an Apotheosis of the Spirit of the Cincinnati,” and the wall murals, with their tapestry-like format, consist of three large panels entitled The Society of the Cincinnati Was Instituted in Peace After Revolution, with a depiction of Larz’s great-grandfather, Col. Richard Clough Anderson (1750–1826); The Order of the Loyal Legion Was Born out of Cruel Civil War (seen in this photograph), with depictions of Larz’s father, Gen. Nicholas Longworth Anderson (1838–92) and his great-uncle, Gen. Robert Anderson (1805–71); and The Order of the Spanish-American War Records a Generous Fight for Freedom. This last panel is a subtle reference to Larz’s brief service as an adjutant general with the US Volunteers at Camp Alger in Dunn Loring, Virginia. A much smaller panel is titled City of Cincinnati Chose Its Name to Commemorate the Society of the Cincinnati, documenting the Anderson family’s connection to Cincinnati, Ohio.‍[31] The Society of the Cincinnati membership certificate issued to Larz’s great-grandfather, Richard Clough Anderson (1750–1826), and signed by George Washington in 1784, was also displayed in this room. It was through these murals and the certificate that Larz educated his guests about what he regarded as the significant place of his family—the Andersons of Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio—in the arc of roughly the first century of US history.

The objects exhibited in the Key Room served as a sharp cultural contrast to the US patriotic themes of the murals. Three Georgian-style tables with glass cases mounted on them displayed a dozen or more examples of Japanese lacquerware. There was also a large bronze Japanese figure of the goddess Kannon (not visible in this photograph) that was juxtaposed along a virtual sightline with another similarly posed female figure, an allegorical representation of the South, in the center of the Civil War mural representing the defeated South (in the center of the mural in this photograph).‍[32]

While the Key Room’s murals place Larz and his Anderson-family ancestors directly into the course of US history through the lens of war and military service, its collection of Japanese objects reminds visitors that the Andersons were citizens of the world, with a special affinity for Japan. Both the painted scenes and the objects on display underscored the patriotism and the cosmopolitanism that Larz needed to promote in order to qualify himself for his political and diplomatic aspirations.

The arrangement of the Key Room connects the Kannon to another female figure that Larz referred to simply as “the South,” a central figure in the nearby Civil War mural by US artist Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928).‍[41] Both figures are in a direct line of sight to each other that suggests a tacit, sympathetic relationship between them: a figure representing compassion and mercy connected to another figure representing defeat and loss. Their relationship to each other is further established by similarities in costume and pose. Their hand gestures mirror one another and reinforce each figure’s significance: Larz described the position of the Kannon’s raised right hand as expressing “an attitude of blessing,”‍[42] whereas the South uses her raised left hand to tender her sword to an allegorical male figure representing “War Bursting Forth.”‍[43] The Andersons created several installations throughout the public rooms of the house in which figures representing East and West were juxtaposed, thus contributing to the eclecticism of the interiors and emphasizing the Andersons’ cosmopolitan outlook on the world.

After greeting the Andersons in the Key Room, guests would proceed into two adjacent drawing rooms, the French Room and the English Room (see floor plan). The French and English themes of these two rooms reflected the cultural importance of these two countries during a time when US elites like the Andersons looked to France and Great Britain for guidance on taste in art, literature, and fashion.

Floor plan of the piano nobile of Anderson House redrawn by Harry I. Martin III in 2015 from the original Little and Browne blueprints in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image © Stephen T. Moskey.

The French Room was the first of two adjacent drawing rooms on the piano nobile where the Andersons and their guests gathered for cocktails before dinner. It was not photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston in 1910, likely because its décor was undergoing a significant alteration around this time as the Andersons were negotiating the purchase of a set of four tapestries, finally acquired in 1911, three of which are visible in this photograph from 2013.

The inventory of 1937 describes this panel, which measures 137 x 127 in. (348 x 323 cm), as “depicting two vases of flowers beneath a vine-wreathed pergola with five marble columns, and two figures of nymphs in the left foreground gathering flowers; naturalistic border of birds, animals, and fishes, in air, land, and sea[.] Brussels mark: B B [Brussels–Brabant] and shield in the lower selvage, and weaver’s mark in right selvage.”‍[50] Beyond their role in establishing a French style for the room, the tapestries also had a more personal meaning for Isabel and Larz. The scenes in the tapestries could be interpreted as a subtle allusion to the Andersons’ Italian garden in Brookline, Massachusetts, which Isabel once called “our enchanted garden” and which served almost as the spiritual core of their relationship.‍[51]

The English Room, adjacent to the French Room, provided another large area where guests could mix and mingle over cocktails. The room’s English appellation comes from its display of six portraits of British aristocrats and an English landscape.‍[53] While the room’s draperies, boiserie, chandelier, and decorative objects installed in symmetrical arrangements projected a formal quality, the overstuffed sofas and armchairs, upholstered in red-and-white floral chintz and yellow chinoiserie chintz, seemingly arranged in an almost haphazard manner, underscored the room’s primary purpose of facilitating social introductions and creating opportunities for casual conversation in a comfortable setting. The art and decorative objects in this room also would have conveyed to the guests that the Andersons were not only Francophiles but also Anglophiles who treasured exotic things like many British aristocrats.

The opulent formality of the floor-to-ceiling, golden satin window draperies and lighting fixtures of the English room contrasted sharply with the informality of the seating arrangements. Much of the decoration, including the intricately modeled papier-mâché ceiling decorated with what the inventory of 1911 describes as “medallions of musical trophies” and framed in “acanthus cartouches”;‍[54] the floral designs of the English chintz slipcovers on the seating; and the carved-and-gilded, bow-shaped wood cornice of the drapery installation with, as Larz described it in the inventory of 1911, “shell, acanthus scrolls and shell cartouche[s] at ends, in relief,” repeated the garden theme of the tapestries in the French Room.‍[55]

The west and east walls of the English Room contained two identically installed displays: a portrait of The Duke of Wellington (ca. 1830) by the English painter John Simpson (1782–1847), with or after Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), on the west wall, and what the Andersons purchased as a study for Lady Cockburn and Her Children (1773) by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), on the east wall, placed above identical glass-fronted display cases surmounted by two “rare old Chinese jade blossoming trees” housed in glass domes.‍[56] Stephen T. Moskey has posited that these two portraits served for the Andersons as a private, allegorical reference to their marriage and to their unfulfilled hopes of having a family. The presence of a small portrait of Isabel and her two prized Japanese crystal balls in front of the Wellington portrait, and an inkstand and drinking cup (symbolizing, perhaps, Larz as a writer and connoisseur of wine and spirits) in front of the Cockburn portrait, help establish this interpretation.‍[57]

At around eight o’clock, after the Andersons and their guests had mingled over cocktails in the French and English Rooms, dinner was announced by the chief butler. Guests were assembled in their order of social precedence for a procession down a long gallery to the dining room. Like the long galleries in English country houses built in the Elizabethan and Jacobean styles, this space runs along the width of the central core of the house, with windows along one side and art collections on display. Oftentimes long galleries are filled with portraits of family or royalty, and the inventory of 1911 indicates that the Gallery at Anderson House had family portraits in miniature mounted together in frames, including four of Isabel’s mother, Anna Minot Weld (1835–1924), and one of Larz’s mother, Elizabeth Coles Kilgour (1843–1917), as well as an oil painting of Isabel’s father, George Hamilton Perkins (1835–99).‍[58] Yet, the dominant impression was not of a family portrait gallery but of an opulent display of fine and decorative arts that had cosmopolitan and ecclesiastical, not just familial and hereditary, associations.

Along the wall without windows were three panels from a set of eight Diana tapestries woven in the late sixteenth century in Brussels. They depict the ancient Roman goddess Diana, patroness of the countryside, of hunters, of crossroads, of the moon, and of childbirth.‍[60] The installations that the Andersons arranged in front of these mythological scenes reinforced the ecclesiastical character of the space. They not only included liturgical or religious objects, such as ecclesiastical vestments, religious-themed paintings and polychrome sculptures, a reliquary-like cabinet, a baptismal font, and two bishop’s stalls (later donated to Washington National Cathedral), but they also were arranged along the wall to suggest the effect of altars or devotional stations in the nave of a church. The illumination of the Gallery at night by four grand torchères with figures of the Apostles, one of which appears here on the right, may have further contributed to the ambience of a candlelit church interior. Larz likely sought to evoke the sumptuous interiors of Catholic churches, whose aesthetic would have appealed to a High Church (or Anglo-Catholic) Episcopalian like himself during this period.‍[61]

This installation by the Andersons illustrates the methodology they used to create cosmopolitan, eclectic installations throughout their homes. In this instance, unrelated objects are put together in an aesthetically pleasing, formally unified way. A Madonna and Child with Saints, Man of Sorrows, the Virgin, and John the Evangelist in Roundels Below by the Master of San Jacopo a Mucciana (Italian, 14th century)‍[64] is hung in the interstices of two panels from a late sixteenth-century series of Diana tapestries from the Brussels workshop of Jacques Guebels the elder (act. 1580–1605) and Jan Raes I (act. 1610–31), based on cartoons by the French painter Toussaint Dubreuil (1561–1602).‍[65] Below the painting, a “Japanese ceremonial long sword [tachi] in carved ivory sheath,” as described in the inventory of 1911, sits on a large, sixteenth-century Italian, inlaid marriage chest (38 x 78 in. [97 x 198 cm]), placed in a lacquered stand so that its curvature echoes Diana’s bow and visually connects with her right hand and arm.‍[66] Unidentified armaments including guns and daggers, possibly of “antique Moorish” origin, are laid on the top of the chest under the Japanese tachi.‍[67] This disparate group of objects is not only linked through curved and connecting forms but also by the repetition and harmony of colors.

This rare color photograph of Anderson House was taken around 1942, when Isabel was still alive and the new owners of the house, the Society of the Cincinnati, were maintaining the interiors as they had been at the time of Larz’s death in 1937. Many of the installations in the Gallery seen in this photograph had remained unchanged, exactly as they were when first photographed more than thirty years earlier, in 1910, by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Other than the flash used to take the photograph, the only sources of lighting in this photograph were the four grand torchères along the left side of the Gallery.

After enjoying cocktails in the French and English Rooms, guests processed down the long Gallery and entered the Dining Room that is located on the east side of the house (see floor plan). This room, like the other rooms in the house they had already passed through, offered a new experience that must have been almost breathtaking.

Floor plan of the piano nobile of Anderson House redrawn by Harry I. Martin III in 2015 from the original Little and Browne blueprints in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image © Stephen T. Moskey.

The Saloon at Anderson house, by far the grandest and most impressive room, was hidden from view until guests exited the Dining Room after dinner and stood on the musicians’ balcony overlooking the brilliantly illuminated, immense space of the room below. From the balcony, they descended the so-called floating staircase to the floor below (see floor plan) for after-dinner coffee and drinks, cigarettes, and entertainment.

Floor plan of the piano nobile of Anderson House redrawn by Harry I. Martin III in 2015 from the original Little and Browne blueprints in the collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image © Stephen T. Moskey.

The Saloon, like other areas of Anderson House, incorporated several features common in English country homes. Larz had once seen a so-called floating staircase, like the one shown here along the left wall, in an unidentified house in England and had been struck by the fact that it was located “inside a room” rather than outside it.‍[78]

This photograph shows an example of the eclectic array of decorative objects arranged by the Andersons in the Saloon. Ecclesiastical architectural elements found in Catholic churches, like the Italian “antique red Verona marble spiral-turned columns with carved Ionic stone capitals,”‍[80] were combined with furnishings linked to royalty, including the “old Venetian carved gilt wood throne chair,”‍[81] likely made in Europe for export to the US market,‍[82] and reproduction Louis XV-style armchairs below a Louis XV carved-and-gilded wood girandole with eight electrified candle branches that was one of the main sources of ambient lighting in the room.

The west wall of the Saloon is marked by a strict symmetry that helps establish it as the focal point of the room, centered on what Larz called an “antique Italian carved stone mantel” that was acquired for the Andersons in Rome in 1899 by the US artist John Elliott (1858/59–1925).‍[83] The elegant mantel is perfectly integrated with the Saloon’s immense interior architecture by the broken pediment, in Caen stone, mounted high on the wall above it. The break in the pediment’s peak is filled by an ILA monogram (the initials of Isabel and Larz Anderson) that also appears in the coffered ceiling.

Five smaller, more intimate, less formal rooms were accessible directly off the Saloon, offering guests alternate areas they could visit during the after-dinner phase of the evening if they wanted to get away from the hub of activity and music in the Saloon. The Red Library offered a quiet space where guests could go for small-group conversation or a game of cards. The Winter Garden was actually an interconnected series of three rooms: a central garden area filled with plants and sculpture where Isabel might entertain her female friends, a Breakfast Room with a distinctly feminine character, and a Smoking Room where men could smoke. And, finally, the Billiard Room was a space where men could gather for cigars and games of pool.

Located off the southeast corner of the Saloon, the Red Library housed the Andersons’ collection of several thousand volumes that reflected their interests. Their cosmopolitan tastes and knowledge of the world were based not just on their travel and education but also on knowledge and insights acquired from books. They were both voracious readers with interests that ranged across many disciplines, including art and architecture; American, English, and French history and literature; and diplomacy and politics. Isabel had a particular interest in modern British and US poetry.‍[86] The room was furnished with many of the same objects typical of libraries in English country houses owned by the privileged and wealthy: built-in bookcases, comfortable armchairs, a desk, a card table, busts, and picturesque landscapes, such as the one over the fireplace identified in the inventory of 1911 as “Hasbrock, 1868: Old Mill” (likely by the US artist Du Bois Fenelon Hasbrouck [1860–1934]).‍[87]

The Winter Garden that ran along the southern exposure of the house provided the Andersons with an opportunity to delight their guests with the experience of enjoying beautiful displays of tropical flowers and foliage blooming indoors in winter. Here they could also share stories with their guests about their love of gardens, and especially their Italian Garden in Brookline designed by US artist and landscape architect Charles A. Platt (1861–1933). The flowers, foliage, trellises, mirrored walls, garden sculpture, and wicker furniture re-created on a small scale features of their indoor and outdoor gardens in Brookline. Isabel especially enjoyed giving her female guests a tour of the Winter Garden, with its natural surroundings associated with women and with Isabel specifically. It included among its botanical specimens specific flowers and foliage that she was especially fond of. But one of Isabel’s favorite things about the garden was that her beloved pet parrots were allowed to fly free there. She once wrote: “I love to sit in our winter garden, surrounded by palms and blood-red azaleas, pure white cyclamens and sweet-smelling lilacs. A bronze Bacchus peeps at me around a heather bush and a little marble faun looks out of the ivy climbing on the golden lattice.”‍[88]

In addition to displaying exotic and garden varieties of plants and flowers, the Winter Garden was also a venue for exhibiting pieces of sculpture and pottery as well as “old Italian” architectural fragments from the Andersons’ collection. In this photograph, a Zuni k’yabokya de’ele (water jar) with a heart-line deer motif, repurposed as a jardinière, is displayed prominently on a rattan table near the center of the garden. On the left, a bronze reproduction of an antique sculpture from Pompeii of Narcissus forms part of a corner floral installation set on the floor against the glass doors of the Breakfast Room. Another bronze of “a conquering young Neptune, with his spear lifted,” as described by Isabel,‍[89] rises from a violet Brescia marble and alabaster fountain at the right, between the two floor-to-ceiling round columns. The Zuni deer jar shares space with reproductions of antique sculptures, creating the kind of eclectic arrangement that the Andersons favored.

The Breakfast Room in the Winter Garden provided a specific, visual connection to the Andersons’ home in Brookline. A mural by the German-US muralist Karl Yens (1868–1945) provided a panoramic view of what Isabel had once called their “enchanted” Italian Garden there.‍[90] Larz worked closely with Yens on the design of the mural to assure accuracy and then, after it was completed, “touched up” parts of the painting himself to correct details.‍[91] The mural was intended to create the illusion of standing on a raised walkway overlooking the Italian Garden, so accuracy was paramount. The Winter Garden might have even seemed to be an extension of the garden portrayed in the mural, to the point that it was furnished with green wicker chairs that matched those shown in the mural. The potted and cut flowers displayed throughout Anderson House for dinner parties, afternoon teas, or just for the couple’s own enjoyment all came from their extensive horticultural operations in Brookline. Even in the dead of winter, their greenhouses produced potted plants in full bloom, cut flowers for floral arrangements, and fresh fruit for the table. All of this was transported in weekly shipments by train from Boston to Washington.

If the Breakfast Room on the east end of the Winter Garden, with its mural and painted furniture, was a feminine space, then the west end of the Winter Garden was surely a masculine space. Identified on the original blueprints as the Smoking Room, this was a place where men could gather to smoke without women present.‍[92] Located just outside the Billiard Room, a venue for tobacco smoking and games of pool,‍[93] the Smoking Room was decorated with bespoke murals documenting Larz’s love of the automobile and the automobile trips he liked to take with Isabel by his side in the Washington area. The maps pictured in the detail of the mural in this photograph were done in what Larz called ‘old style’ and were commissioned from US muralist Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858–1928).‍[94] The Andersons’ houseboat, the S. S. Roxana is shown at anchor in the Potomac River, along with the sailing yacht Virginia that they chartered from time to time for trips to the Caribbean. The maps can be illuminated at night, suggesting they received special attention at evening functions when Larz could use them as props as he talked with his male guests about his local automobile travel and, farther afield, houseboat cruises along the East Coast of the United States.

Located in the southwest corner adjacent to the Saloon and facing the garden, the Billiard Room functioned as a space for Larz to entertain his male guests after dinner in a club-like atmosphere with its “billiard and pool table,” brown oak paneling, comfortable armchairs, and, hanging on the walls, portraits of notable Washington men. Today it serves as a gallery for temporary exhibitions primarily on American Revolutionary history and the art of eighteenth-century warfare, and occasionally exhibitions about the Andersons themselves. The original Anderson furnishings and decorative objects have been relocated or sold.

This photograph of the northwest corner of the Billiard Room includes the pottery from a variety of Southwestern producers and locations (Zuni, Acoma, Hopi, and possibly Laguna) stacked in an orderly fashion both inside and on top of a carved wood cabinet with glass doors and arranged together with a collection of Larz’s yachting flags and photographs of yachts owned by the Andersons and by the Weld branch of Isabel’s family. According to the inventory of 1911, there were fourteen pots, though they are not all visible in this photograph.‍[96] As discussed in more depth in the accompanying article, the Billiard Room exemplifies how Isabel and Larz incorporated Native American objects into their eclectic interior arrangements as a means to convey to visitors their actual and aspirational cosmopolitan identity.

Sightlines: Arrangement of Objects in the Billiard Room

Desk and caricatures Jain shrine Native American pottery display Japanese lacquerware

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Southeast corner of the Billiard Room showing caricatures in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Desk and caricatures

Hanging on the walls of the Billiard Room, as seen in this photograph of the southeast corner, were sixty-nine “caricatures of well-known Washington characters,” all Larz’s acquaintances and friends, commissioned from US artist Clary Ray (1865–1916).‍[106] Isabel donated them to Washington’s Alibi Club after Larz’s death. Larz remarked in the inventory of 1911 that “this collection continually being added to painted by Clary Ray on order of L.A. Among the first, about 1906, were the portraits of Doctor Frank Loring and Mr. Hugh Legare, which were seen by L.A. and suggested the collection.”‍[107] Many of the portraits represent their sitters in urban business suits with hats and walking sticks; however, several of them depict their subjects in riding or hunting attire suitable for a country gentleman, and in one of them the subject appears as a chef. Although family photographs and heirlooms like those displayed throughout this room might not seem that unusual in a domestic interior, these caricatures have a more eccentric character and seem to reinforce the clubby atmosphere associated with a Billiard Room while contributing to its eclectic and ecclesiastical aesthetic, as discussed in the article that accompanies this digital component.

Detail of p. 27 in Larz Anderson, “An Inventory of Articles in Anderson House, Washington City” (with annotations), 1911, Anderson Collection, The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Detail of Little and Browne (architecture firm), Northwest corner of the Billiard Room showing Japanese lacquerware in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Japanese lacquerware

The whereabouts of the set of Japanese lacquerware is unknown, and there unfortunately are no detailed or color images of it. In the inventory of 1911, it was described as “Japanese black lacquered tin set with gold lacquer decoration of typical figure scenes,” and Larz added a notation in his own hand: “This very interesting and complete set of lacquer on metal acquired from Koopman (abt 1906) probably English or Dutch Chinoiserie.”‍[104] There also is a note in graphite in Isabel’s hand: “sent to Weld – Brookline,” indicating that it may have been moved to Brookline after the house was gifted to the Society of the Cincinnati in the late 1930s.‍[105]

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Southwest corner of the Billiard Room in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Shvetambara Jain household shrine (ghar derasar), n.d., in 2023. Teakwood. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Photograph courtesy of Stephen T. Moskey.

Jain shrine

Installed in the southwest corner of the Billiard Room near the Native American pottery was a carved teakwood, Shvetambara Jain household shrine (ghar derasar).‍[98] The woodwork frame, seen here, would have been separated from its icon(s) and been deconsecrated prior to its arriving in the hands of the major dealer of Indian art and antiques, Watson and Company in Bombay (now Mumbai), where the Andersons purchased it during their wedding journey in 1899. In addition, to suit Anglo-European and US tastes in that era, the frame was stripped of its brightly colored paint, though traces remain across its surface.‍[99] Placed in the corner against the wall on a pedestal like a piece of sculpture, this shrine, like the Native American pottery, was divorced from its original function. It became part of the Andersons’ eclectic collection, serving as a souvenir of their trip to India. In a letter to his mother, Larz associated the wood carving on the two shrines they acquired with their visit to see the “exquisite work in marble” on the Dilwara Jain temples not far from Mount Abu.‍[100]

Larz’s annotation in the inventory of 1911 suggests that he was particularly proud of this Jain household shrine, now located in the Great Stairs Hall at Anderson House, partly due to its rarity: “With other specimen at ‘Weld’ [the Andersons’ Brookline home][,] probably unique in America.”‍[101] However, he misunderstood its symbolism, as revealed by the description of the iconography in the inventory, along with Larz’s comments about it.‍[102] Rather than Vishnu or Buddha with elephants and nautch (court) dancers, it features a Gajalakshmi scene with elephants at the top of the universe bathing Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, fertility, and prosperity, who, in turn, holds lotuses with elephants on top of them and is surrounded by a trailing vine that emerges from the mouths of two sea creatures (makaras). The Jains, who were merchants, regarded this subject as particularly meaningful and auspicious: according to the Indologist John Cort, Lakshmi “is essentially the occupational deity of the Jains.”‍[103] This scene frequently appears on household shrines and temples along with the door guardians (dvarapala) at the bottom of the four pillars and the “faces of glory” (kirtimurka) along the lower edge just below the door with the rosette pattern.

Little and Browne (architecture firm), Northwest corner of the Billiard Room in 1910, Anderson House, Washington, constructed 1902–5. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Collection of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Image in the public domain; image courtesy of The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Native American pottery display

Display Cabinet Hopi Pottery Zuni Pottery

Billiard Room display cabinet in 2023. Collection of the Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC. Photograph by Stephen T. Moskey.

Click to return to

Pottery display

The display cabinet, now in use in a library office of the Society of the Cincinnati, measures 86 in. (218 cm) wide, 50 in. (127 cm) high, and 22 1/2 in. (57 cm) deep, with 17 in. (43 cm)–deep shelves in the center suitable for the Andersons’ collection of pottery from the Southwest and 15 in. (38 cm)–deep shelves on the sides. The Andersons removed the shelves so that they could stack the pots in the central section of the cabinet. The cabinet resembles the glass cases used for displays in natural history and anthropological museums, art museums, department stores, and at world’s fairs; however, its carved wood details, including the Ionic columns, the festoon of roses in the center of the frieze, and the rosettes on the glass doors, are more elaborate than those on many such cases and harmonize with the other wood decoration on the furnishings and the walls of the Billiard Room. For the Andersons and their guests, many of whom may have been unfamiliar with Southwest pottery, the cabinet lent a preciousness and an aesthetic value to these objects, linking them to the other decorative items in the room.

Attributed to Nampeyo or her daughter Annie Healing Nampeyo, Hopi jar, n.d, in 2016. Clay and paint. Originally part of the Anderson Collection. Current location unknown; sold at Bonhams, San Francisco, June 6, 2016. Photograph courtesy of Bonhams.

Click to return to

Pottery display

This Hopi jar with its feather and wing motifs is attributed to the renowned Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo (1859–1942) or her daughter Annie Healing Nampeyo (1884–1968) and once belonged to the Andersons, though there is no archival evidence that they were aware of the identity of its maker. It appears in Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photograph stacked on top of another Hopi pot with strapping, and was used as a container for holding the signal (a triangular red flag with a jumping black horse) for the Andersons’ houseboat, the S. S. Roxana, another example of how the Native objects were appropriated and repurposed by their elite white owners.

Maker once known, Zuni k’yabokya de’ele (water jar) with a heart-line deer motif, n.d. Clay and paint. Originally part of the Anderson Collection. Private collection. Photograph courtesy of Dwight Lanmon.

Click to return to

Pottery display

This Zuni k’yabokya de’ele (water jar) with a heart-line deer motif by a maker once known, previously belonged to the Andersons. It is described in detail at the beginning of the article that accompanies this digital component. Given that formal harmony and balance were important considerations in interior decoration during the Andersons’ period, it is not surprising that the colors of the pots in the Andersons’ collection—red, ochre, black, and white—would have harmonized with the brown oak wall panels, the inlaid oak floor, and the carved walnut furnishings throughout the room, and the reddish earth tones would have complemented the green cover of the billiard or pool table and “the green plaited silk” shades on the light fixtures nearby.‍[97] In addition, the natural motifs painted on their surfaces, like the deer and the birds on this jar, would have been in concert with the patterns and designs derived from nature—ranging from animals to flowers to leaves—on the carved furnishings, the upholstery, the lacquerware, and the Jain household shrine.

This floor plan of the Billiard Room indicates the careful placement of the Andersons’ collection of Native American pottery along the west side of the house across from the door to the Saloon so that it would have been visible before entering the space and would have assumed a prominent position in the room. The Andersons also carefully arranged the room so that an almost triangular sightline was created among the pots, the Japanese lacquerware, and the Jain household shrine, all objects that authenticated the Andersons’ worldwide travels and their interest in what they regarded as exotic cultures.