The White House Gift Shop, Est. 1946

Essential Presence: Jacqueline Kennedy in Her Rose Garden

& the 2004 White House Kennedy East Wing Ornament

• Hand Made in the USA by The White House Gift Shop
• 24 Karat Gold Trim Copper, Brass, Baked Enamels
I• Includes Framed, Signed and Numbered (1/250, 2/250 ...) Original 8" x 10" Framed Artist's Print of Jackie Kennedy in Her Rose Garden: Copy of Original Painting with Original Coding by Artist-Historian A. F. Giannini
• Limited Original Issue • Never Remade!
• 2004 White House Hand Made Ornament


Essential Presence: Jacqueline Kennedy in Her Rose Garden

& the 2004 White House Kennedy East Wing Ornament

There was a moment in American history when a young First Lady stepped into a neglected mansion and quietly decided that the White House should become a living museum of the nation’s story. Jacqueline Kennedy restored not only rooms and furniture, but a sense of memory, proportion, and grace. Her work culminated in the now-legendary televised tour of 1962, watched by tens of millions of viewers, in which she walked the country, room by room, through their own house.

Outside those rooms, she and garden designer Rachel “Bunny” Mellon re-imagined the grounds, balancing the West Colonnade’s Rose Garden with a renewed East Garden. In 1965, Lady Bird Johnson formally dedicated that East Garden in her honor, naming it the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden—a living tribute to a First Lady who believed beauty and history were forms of public service.

For decades, visitors entered the White House through the East Wing: a World War II–era addition that became home to the First Lady’s staff, the Social Office, the visitors’ entrance, the theater, and the East Colonnade that led guests past the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden into the Executive Residence. It was, in many ways, the working heart of the “people’s house,” where countless quiet acts of hospitality and service unfolded far from cameras.

In the autumn of 2025, that familiar landscape changed forever. To clear ground for a new 90,000-square-foot State Ballroom, the East Wing and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden were demolished—its offices, colonnades, plantings, and vistas reduced to a construction site in a matter of weeks. Whatever one’s politics, the loss of that wing and garden has been felt by historians, former staff, preservationists, and ordinary visitors as a rupture in the physical story of the White House.

This collection—the “Essential Presence” painting of Jacqueline Kennedy in her Rose Garden, paired with the 2004 Kennedy East Wing Christmas & Holiday Ornament—is my way of holding open a doorway that no longer exists in stone and brick. The painting restores her to the garden that bore her name; the ornament remembers the East Room doors that once opened toward that garden at Christmastime. Together, they form a small, tactile eulogy to a vanished wing and a First Lady whose sense of care still shapes our idea of the White House.

Essential Presence: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Her Rose Garden

Acrylic painting by artist-historian Anthony F. Giannini

As an artist and historian, I wanted to paint not nostalgia, but presence. In this work, Jacqueline Kennedy walks the stone path of her garden in a soft pink sheath dress, a simple strand of pearls at her throat. The White House rises in the luminous distance, its neoclassical façade softened by late-afternoon light. Roses in blush, cream, and warm coral lean toward her as she passes—an honor guard of color and scent.

Her gesture is quiet: one hand extended to lightly touch a single blossom, the other relaxed at her side. The mood is contemplative rather than ceremonial. This is not the staged glamour of a state dinner, but a private moment in the space she helped bring into being—a First Lady taking measure of the garden and, perhaps, of the history unfolding around her.

I painted the scene in an impressionistic yet realistic style, with soft, layered brushwork and warm, atmospheric light. The edges dissolve gently into the air, but the face and hands hold the clarity of a museum portrait. The aim is to let viewers feel that she is both of her time and somehow still walking among us—an essential presence rather than a distant icon.

Each collector receives an original 8" x 10" framed artist’s print, created from my painting, signed and individually numbered (1/250, 2/250 …). The print is produced on archival, museum-quality stock and bears my authentication coding and signature as both artist and historian. Once the small edition is spoken for, it will never be remade in this form, preserving the integrity of the work as a historical artifact as well as a piece of fine art.

The Ornament

The White House Kennedy East Wing Christmas & Holiday Ornament (2004)
Hand-made in the USA for The White House Gift Shop, Est. 1946

The 2004 ornament in this pairing comes from an earlier moment in my career with The White House Gift Shop, when the East Wing still greeted visitors with its familiar colonnades and the doors to Jacqueline Kennedy’s garden. Crafted in copper and brass with 24-karat gold trim and richly colored baked enamels, it depicts a radiant East Room window flanked by two Christmas trees and a red sleigh overflowing with gifts.

Across the top, a festive banner reads “Christmas 2004”, arching over the window and the double doors that, in reality, opened toward the Kennedy garden. The detailing is intentionally intricate: the snow-lit trees, the sleigh’s scrolling runners, the tiny wrapped packages. Each element is cut, plated, and enameled by hand in the United States, in keeping with the long tradition of White House holiday ornaments as miniature works of metal art.

What gives this particular piece new resonance in 2025 is the view it implies. Those East Room doors and the offices just beyond them are gone now, along with the East Wing that once housed the First Lady’s staff and welcomed millions of visitors to the People’s House. The ornament has become, almost accidentally, a portrait of a lost architectural relationship: lighted rooms opening to a garden dedicated to Jacqueline Kennedy.

This ornament was a limited original issue in 2004 and has never been remade. Within this collection, each ornament is paired with the signed, numbered print of Essential Presence, creating a two-part reliquary, metal and canvas, object and image, honoring a First Lady, a garden, and a wing of the White House that now exist only in memory, film, and a few surviving artifacts.

For Collectors and Stewards

I offer this set to collectors not simply as a holiday keepsake, but as a small act of stewardship. The White House has always changed, Jefferson’s colonnades, Roosevelt’s wings, Truman’s structural reconstruction, and now the new ballroom, yet each generation bears responsibility for remembering what was entrusted to it.


By placing the 2004 East Wing ornament beside the new Essential Presence portrait, we honor Jacqueline Kennedy’s conviction that history can be made visible, touchable, and beautiful. In your hands, these pieces become more than decorations; they become a way of saying that some presences—some gardens, some acts of quiet care remain essential, even when the walls around them have been torn down.

Essential Presence: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Her Rose Garden
Acrylic painting by artist-historian Anthony Fileccia Giannini.



Essential Presence: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy
by Anthony Fileccia Giannini
Gossamer Acrylic Painting, 4' x 3'