Dining in eighteenthcentury Williamsburg.(Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia)(Brief Article)

While Colonial Williamsburg is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year, one of its buildings--the King's Arms Tavern--is marking its fiftieth. The tavern was rebuilt on its original foundations in 1951, like numerous other structures in the museum complex, the best known of which is the Governor's Palace. The original tavern was the meeting place of a number of illustrious Americans, among them George Washington and William Byrd III, and it was one of the most elegant taverns in what was then the capital of the British colonies in North America.

A decade after Williamsburg was founded as a museum site in 1926, the institution launched a reproduction program, the products of which are highly regarded for their quality and fidelity to historical antecedents. Today, more than fifty manufacturers provide some four thousand items including furniture, fabrics, wall coverings, bedding, paint, and tablewares.

In celebration of the anniversary of the tavern a number of products have been manufactured based on originals known to have been used in taverns in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. During that century, as today, specific glasses were developed ...