John F. Kennedy Funeral Fabric Used to Decorate the White House East Room 1963

Description: Very rare and scarce large swatch of black cambric fabric, 11.75″ x 12.25″, which was leftover material used to drape the East Room of the White House and around the casket after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy wanted the White House and funeral procession to mirror that of President Abraham Lincoln. Comes from the White House upholsterer during the Kennedy presidency. Includes a detailed 1982 letter of provenance on mock White House letterhead from White House staff members Larry and Norma Arata, addressed to noted collector Raleigh DeGeer Amyx, which reads, in part: “It is with sadness I present to you some of the black cambric which was left over from the material used in the East Room immediately following the Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, on November 22, 1963. Larry Arata had been brought to the White House two years earlier at the personal request of the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, to participate in the total restoration and upholstering of each piece of White House furniture. When the assassination occurred, Mrs. Kennedy had made almost immediate contact with the White House and in a kind, firm and controlled manner she requested that the exterior and interior of the White House be decorated as closely as possible to the way it was when President Lincoln lay in state in the East Room in 1865. As I recall, Mrs. Kennedy suggested we might find such a reference in the White House Library. My husband, Larry and I arrived at the White House before 8:00 pm on November 22, 1963. We knew immediately that we had only 100 yards of black cambric in the White House. This was not nearly enough. My husband, Larry, made the determination of what kind of black material should be used. It had to be dark and thin so that it could be draped easily. We telephoned upholsters until we found one who had enough additional black cambric. Larry and I then began our work. We used a copy of an 1865 engraving of the East Room. We started working at 8:00 pm on November 22, 1963. We draped the black cambric over the fireplaces, drapes, chandeliers, mantel pieces, windows, the White House exterior and the area in which our beloved President would lay in state. We worked all night and up until 4:30 am on November 23, 1963. At that moment a dramatic event took place. Larry and I were still working in the East Room. The First Lady entered the room with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, by her side. There were no more than a dozen people in the East Room as the President's body arrived. The Priest also came in. When I saw the First Lady she was still wearing her pink skirt with blood stains on it. Larry and I did not approach her. We felt it would have been inappropriate. We wanted to spare her the confrontation of two more grieving friends at this almost unbearable moment. Mrs. Kennedy left shortly after this with Robert Kennedy. He slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. She slept in the President's bed. At 10:00 am the same morning she returned to the East Room as we had prepared it for her for a ten o'clock Mass. The rest is history. It is all so sad.” In fine condition. Accompanied by a magazine page photo of Kennedy's casket being placed in the East Room of the White House. This fabric when it appears on the market, is typically micro pieces less than 1/2 inch in size, along with a certificate of authenticity on a card. They sell for $135 each. I have been collecting since 1983 and only have seen a large piece like this hit the market once before. This is highly collectible for the serious JFK collector. If you wanted to, you could break this up into those micro pieces and sell them and more than double your investment. You could get about 144 one inch pieces and sell them individually at $135 (the going rate) and make far more than your initial investment. I didn’t want to take the time to do that, so I’m selling this as one large piece. For comparison purposes, two swatches of light and dark blue seat leather from the limousine Kennedy was riding in at the time of his assassination, measuring approximately 4.5 x 3 and 4.5 x 2.5 inches, from the same collector, sold at auction for $18,750 in November of 2018. Four days after the Assassination the White House upholsterer (Larry Arata) and a Secret Service Agent removed the leather at the White House. The light blue leather is from the center of the rear seat. The dark blue leather is from the border of the rear seat. The spots on the leather are the dried blood of President John F. Kennedy. This Secret Service Agent retained a close relationship with the collector over the course of many years. So you can see, these authentic assassination related pieces increase in value and are in high demand for serious Kennedy collectors. More information about the planning of the funeral… 60 years ago (November 22, 1963) this year, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX. Three days later, on November 25, 1963, he was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. The funeral was attended by heads of state and representatives from more than 100 counties, with untold millions more watching on television. Afterward, at the grave site, Jacqueline Kennedy and President Kennedy's two brothers - Robert and Edward, lit an eternal flame. According to the JFK Library, there were 1,200 individuals invited to attend the President's funeral. Based on an oral interview for the JFK Library, Sanford Fox, who was Chief of the Social Entertainment Office, recalls the preparation for the funeral invitation and mass cards. He started in this office under FDR. He handled printing, engraving and social events for State Affairs, in collaboration with the White House Social Secretary and Mrs. Kennedy herself. He recalls 41 dinners, 115 luncheons, 20 musicals and 14 receptions for members of Congress, diplomatic corps, etc. He pulled from his files how the White House handled the death and funeral of FDR. This guided their work. He worked closely with Sergeant Shriver (JFK’ brother-in-law and head of the Peace Corps) and Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke (Chief of Protocol) on all the details. He had help from the Government Printing Office as well for printing of the funeral invitations and the mass cards. He recalls Sergeant Shriver giving him mass cards of the President’s brother and sister who has previously passed so Sandy had examples to draw from. Mr. Shriver also said the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi was a favorite of the President and to incorporate that on the mass card. Sanford also worked with Chief Knudsen, a lead photographer from the military who covered the President and identified pictures that Mrs. Kennedy could choose from for the mass card. There were three photographs that were narrowed down to give to Mrs. Kennedy. Ironically she chose the very same one that JFK said to save for special occasions. Sandy met with Robert F. Kennedy, Sergeant Shriver and Mrs. Kennedy. She had drawn out on White House stationery what she would like for the mass card. It included this statement, “Dear God, please take care of your servant John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” Mr. Shriver brought a large printed copy of JFK’s inaugural address and she chose pieces of the last three paragraphs to include also. Ironically, Mr. Fox was in the middle of planning a White House state dinner on 11/25/63, for the Chancellor of a West Germany. It was of course cancelled due to JFK’s funeral which would be on the same day. I just recently sold one of the menus. Once the White House Social Secretary and Chief of Protocol learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated on 11/22/63, the State Dinner was of course cancelled and planning began for the funeral instead. The lying-in-state of Kennedy's body in the Rotunda of the Capitol was modeled on that of Lincoln in 1865. The catafalque that had borne the Great Emancipator's coffin was brought out of storage and used again. No one was allowed to miss the historical significance of this restaging, which accorded to JFK in death a Lincolnesque moral stature in relation to African American advancement that he had not attained during his lifetime. So many ordinary citizens came to pay their respects that the Rotunda was held open all night long. More than a quarter of a million mourners, eight abreast filed past between 1:30 Sunday afternoon and 8:00 the next morning. Although the officials in charge followed the rule book for military and state funerals to the letter, Mrs. Kennedy added a number of personal touches and orchestrated the event. When she insisted on walking behind the caisson to the funeral mass rather than ride "in a fat black Cadillac," researchers were dispatched to the Library of Congress, where they were relieved to find in the volumes of yellowed newsprint verification that a precedent existed in the funeral procession of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. A more recent touch was the riderless horse carrying a pair of boots reversed in the stirrups. That funeral motif supposedly dates back to the time of Genghis Khan as a way to commemorate a leader lost in battle. It had been used for an American presidential funeral only once, eighteen years earlier, at the wartime death of Roosevelt. A gelding that ironically bore the name Black Jack — the nickname for Jackie's father — was led behind the flag-draped bier of the other Jack, her husband. As historian William Manchester describes it, "His streaming flanks were unnatural, alarming. His steel hooves clattered in jarring tattoo, an unnerving contrast to the crack cadence in front; his eyes rolled whitely. He was nearly impossible to control." The horse brought a note of barely tamed urgency to the proceedings, but he did not upstage the first lady. The funeral, attended by delegates from eighty-two countries (including eight heads of state and ten prime ministers) and watched live by hundreds of millions of people across the globe (it was broadcast even on Soviet state television), was Jackie's show from first to last.

Price: 4500 USD

Location: Topeka, Kansas

End Time: 2024-01-15T23:19:12.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD