President Grover Cleveland was a bachelor when he took office in 1884. His sister, Libbie Cleveland, acted as his hostess. Libbie invited Mrs. Oscar Folsom and her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Frances, to the White House. President Cleveland fell for young Frances, and after she finished school and while the gossips were still focusing on her mother as a potential First Lady, Frances won the President's heart.
Some years later, young Mrs. Cleveland visited an island off Maine, where she became enchanted by the antique furniture available there. Upon her return to the White House, a van filled with antiques pulled up to the White house. "What the hell have you got there?" asked the President. "Old furniture for Mrs. Cleveland from somewhere in Maine," said the mover. Cleveland inspected the pile of old chairs, bureaus, desks and beds and said to the mover, "You turn around and take that damn kindling pile back downtown." The mover left with the load of old furniture and the President forgot about it.

Two weeks later the President was gone from the White House for the day and upon his return he noticed a chair that looked familiar. He asked his wife, "where'd you get that" Where'd it come from?" "That?" she said, "why, we've always had that. We've had that for years." Cleveland grumbled and dismissed it.

A few days later, the President was again gone for the day and upon his return another new "old" chair appeared. "Where'd that come from?" he asked his wife once again. "Oh," said Frances, "that old chair? we got it out of the attic, we've had that for a long time." In the spare bedroom, the President saw a "new" bed, shiny and polished. And then he remembered where he had seen these pieces before - on the kindling pile he sent away a few weeks earlier. Within six months, Mrs. Cleveland managed to slip every single piece of her treasured antiques from Maine into the White House without tipping her hand to the President.

Jackie Kennedy was known for refurbishing the White House with furnishings which had been there in previous administrations. Having been shocked by the poverty in the coal-mining areas, she set about to buy new White House crystal from the Morgantown Glassware Guild, Inc. in West Virginia. Later, a well-known manufacturer of glassware offered to donate a complete set of crystal to the White House, but Mrs. Kennedy refused saying that she would continue to purchase glassware from West Virginia until they weren't poor anymore. I saw her stemware at the JFK Library in Boston. It is beautifully simple and clean. Classic in the most elegant way, as was Mrs. Kennedy.