President Donald Trump has festooned the White House cabinet room with more than a dozen pieces of fine portrait art and antiques – from Qing Dynasty porcelain to a 18th century cup by an English silversmith.
It’s part of a growing display of wealth and lineage inside the White House, in a redecoration that is packed not only with pieces that send a symbolic message about American power and peacemaking.
A White House source said Trump is making ‘daily’ changes to the furniture display.
The Daily Mail received details about Trump’s installed artifacts and artwork, which include cabinetry, fine porcelain, mirrors, Chinese vases, sculptures and busts of American icons Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and George Washington, as well as oil paintings depicting influential presidents.
The cabinet room changes are a lower-profile part of Trump’s massive refurbishment of White House – with plans that now include a new 90,000 square foot, $200 million ballroom that would be connected to a ‘modernized’ East Wing.
Among some of the newest additions to the room, where Trump leads high-powered get togethers with top officials:
– Gold damask draperies with Greek key trim and brass curtain rods featuring circular finials
– An English silver two-handled cup by George Wickes (1742-1743), acquired by the White House in 1968
– An 1802 Girandole mirror by British craftsman Thomas Fentham
– A 19th-century bust of Benjamin Franklin
– Chinese export porcelain vases from 1736-1795
– Gilded silver plates from the World War I era
‘I picked it all myself,’ Trump said at a cabinet meeting earlier this month when he first announced the changes.
He referenced some of the artwork, as well as lamps he called ‘very important’ – saying they were ‘missing medallions.’
The president personally reviewed pieces now on display in what he calls the ‘vault’ of White House objects.
The Girandole mirror is by Fentham, a London-based ‘carver, gilder, glass grinder and picture frame maker,’ according to the British Furniture History Society.
The items are placed around the Cabinet Room alongside paintings of some of Trump’s heroes – along with one of four-term Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Lincoln oil painting, The Peacemakers, is by George Peter Alexander Healy. The 1868 work shows Lincoln’s historic March 1865 strategy meeting with top Union generals aboard the steamer River Queen during the war’s final days.
Another Lincoln portrait by Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk from 1931 was created from a life mask of Lincoln taken by his father, Leonard Volk, in Chicago in April 1860.
The most surprising addition Trump has incorporated is a portrait of President James Polk by Alexander Healy.
Polk served a single term, which saw him annex territory that massively expanded the U.S. on the map – adding California Texas, New Mexico, and the Oregon Territory.
Painting: James Knox Polk by George Peter Alexander Healy
Oil on canvas, 1858
Acquired in 1858
Painting: Andrew Jackson by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews after Thomas Sully
Oil on canvas, 1879
Acquired in 1879
Painting: The Peacemakers by George Peter Alexander Healy
Oil on canvas, 1868
Acquired in 1947
Painting: Dwight David Eisenhower by Thomas Edgar Stephens
Oil on canvas, 1960
Acquired in 1961
Painting: Lincoln, the Ever-Sympathetic by Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk
Oil on canvas, 1931
Acquired in 1966
Bust: Benjamin Franklin by Unidentified Artist after Jean-Jacques Caffieri
Marble, early 19th century
Acquired in 1976
Sculpture: Andrew Jackson by Clark Mills
White metal, 1855
Acquired in 1859
Bust: George Washington by Hiram Powers
Marble, 1860
Acquired in 1981
Girandole Mirror made by Thomas Fentham
Gilded wood and glass, c. 1802
Acquired in 1962
Plates made by Gorham Manufacturing Company
Gilded silver, 1914-1916
Acquired in 1958
Two-handled cup made by George Wickes
Gilded silver, 1742-1743
Acquired in 1958
Wine Coolers made by Wallace Silversmiths
Silverplate, c. 1985
Acquired in 1985
Vases
Chinese export Porcelain, 1736-1795
Acquired in 1972
Cabinets
Mesquite and oak, 2008-2009
Acquired in 2009
Pedestals
Mahogany, c. 1805
Acquired in 1969
Sconces made by Cox, Nostrand & Garrison, Inc.
Gilded bronze, c. 1934
Acquired in 1934
Draperies: gold damask with Greek key trim, 2025
Drapery poles: brass with circular finials, 2025
Acquired in 2025
Source: White House official
Trump began his second term shortly after revealing his desire to buy Canada and acquire Greenland, neither of which he has been able to achieve. But he hailed Polk, calling him ‘sort of a real estate guy’ for adding California to the U.S. map.
Trump has repeatedly stated his interest in leaving his personal touch on the White House.
It began with his golden makeover of the Oval Office, with an expanding footprint.
Trump’s first decorative undertaking came in the Oval Office, where he has lined the walls with oil paintings that caught his eye.
Trump met this week with workers who are installing pavers over the grass in the White House Rose Garden and has touted plans to construct a grand ballroom.
The president has even taken a keen interest on renovations taking place at the Federal Reserve, likely in part to try to intimidate his nemesis, Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Trump’s focus on art objects inside the White House come amid turmoil in the wider D.C. art scene since he returned to the Oval Office. Trump has installed loyalists on the Kennedy Center Board of Directors and has called for changes in its programming.
Last week, portraitist Amy Sherald, who painted the famous portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama, said she was withdrawing her show from the National Portrait Gallery. The artist suggested pressure over her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty.
Trump even invoked the ‘beautiful room’ when fuming about the investigation into his ties with Russia and tossed out accusations of treason by members of the Obama administration.
Trump boasted about placing the Declaration of Independence in the Cabinet room, an oversight he believes he remedied.
‘I guess people didn’t feel too good about putting it here, but I do,’ Trump said.
For Trump, installing a copy of the revered document is a way to establish himself as the true descendant of the Founders’ vision.
But history is rarely so simple.
According to a report in the Atlantic, Obama – the president Trump accuses of not treasuring the document – sought to get his own historic copy of the Declaration for the White House.
It turned out it already had one.