Work in the Yellow Room nears completion: This past fall, reproduction wallpaper and damask bed furnishings were installed in the Yellow Room—a combination that promises to vividly confirm why this room represented the Washingtons’ best guest bedchamber in 1799. The bed furnishings, designed and fabricated by Natalie Larson of Historic Textile Reproductions, are based on George Washington’s 1757 purchase from London of a mahogany bedstead with “yellow Silk & Worsted Damask Furniture, … & Carvd Cornishes compleat,” a suite that remained the most highly valued of all the Washington beds in the General’s probate inventory. The wallpaper, produced by Adelphi Paper Hangings, is an elegant neoclassical pattern featuring vertical repeats of military trophies, palm branches, and bellflowers, based on a documented paper, c. 1770–1780, from the Theodore Lyman House in Wells, Maine (now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg).

Arabesque pattern wallpaper in Mansion’s central passage: The sophisticated and formal pattern is a documented example of an arabesque in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. John Imlay of Allentown, New Jersey, purchased the original from William Poyntell of Philadelphia in April 1794. George Washington purchased paper from the same retailer three years later, as he and Martha returned to Mount Vernon. The pattern is an arabesque, which is a term for a group of papers that imitate ancient Roman wall painting. In the 1890s, Colonel Harrison Dodge found a sample of a 1790s arabesque in the central passage at Mount Vernon. The reproduced pattern chosen is likely quite similar to the one the Washingtons selected.

Rare breed recognition for ram lambs Sneelock and Lorax: Mount Vernon’s livestock team and its heritage breed Hog Island sheep reached a major milestone with the Livestock Conservancy, a nonprofit whose mission is to protect endangered livestock and poultry breeds from extinction. Mount Vernon’s Sneelock was the 2,000th Hog Island sheep registered since the beginning of the registry in 1997; Lorax was the 600th Hog Island sheep that Mount Vernon alone has registered since 1997. These are major accomplishments in the preservation of this rare breed. The Hog Island sheep were chosen for their similarity to George Washington’s original flock, based on his own descriptions. Hog Island sheep take their name from the barrier island off Virginia’s Eastern Shore on which they lived—mostly in a feral state—for centuries, isolated from genetic influences that have created the sheep most people recognize today.