This hand-painted presidential dinner service, designed for the White House just after the American Civil War (1861–1865), celebrates the diversity of American landscapes, plants, and animals. The different shapes of the dishes reflect the courses of a meal. When placed across the Presidential table, these dishes symbolically reunited Northern and Southern, Eastern and Western landscapes of the recently war-torn United States. Theodore Russell Davis’ designs for the complete set were documented in a handbook, produced by the manufacturer, that described the geographic location, habitat, and origin or migratory pattern of each plant, animal, or bird. Through these elaborate dishes, the complex histories of the American land and landscape are made apparent. The American Soup of the XVth Century depicts a Native American figure preparing his meal while gazing out at a waterfall and rainbow. The date in the title suggests that this idyllic moment took place before the arrival of European colonizers in 1492, but it also falsely defines the presence of Native Americans as an aspect of America’s past rather than its present. Plants like okra, which were not native to America and were likely imported from Africa, catalogue the nation’s global trade and its exploitative history of enslavement. In The Studio, Davis depicted the small structure in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he completed his watercolor studies for this service.