During a recent trip to Washington D.C. I was able to spend some time at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens. This is the home of the late Marjorie Merriweather Post.  She was C.W. Post’s only child and sole heiress of the Postum Cereal Company which later became General Foods Corporation. The property is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself a tourist in Washington D.C.

The Dining Room features authentic French decor, including oak paneling recovered from an eighteenth-century Parisian home. Two of the room’s highlights are not, however, French: four large Dutch paintings of hunting scenes and a spectacular Italian table designed in 1927 for Mar-a-Lago, Mrs. Post’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, and requested in her will to be brought to Hillwood. When its six leaves are in place, it can seat more than thirty people.

Today, table settings in the Dining Room and adjacent Breakfast Room are rotated with selections of porcelain, glass, and flatware from French and Russian services.

The design of the Breakfast Room recalls the breakfast room in Mrs. Post’s New York City apartment that was built in the 1920’s. The bronze metal work is from the New York apartment, also. The gilt bronze and green glass chandelier comes from Catherine Palace, one of Catherine the Great’s favorite residences outside St. Petersburg.

I decided to include the kitchen and pantry in my post so you could see where the wonderful meals were prepared and where a lot of the dishware was stored.

Do any of you have a silver safe in your pantry? Since Mrs. Post’s death in 1973 no meals have been prepared in the kitchen. She requested it be retired.

I’ll close with this view from one of the pantry windows.

Please visit Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for more tablescapes.

Click on gardens and Russian treasures to see more of my posts on Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens. Later next week I’ll also post about the Russian Icon collection Mrs. Post acquired and my favorite painting in her home from 1883, A Boyar Wedding Feast.

Photobucket replaced all my photos with blurred out versions and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.