ONLY NINE SETS SETS REMAIN THEN GONE FOREVER!

THE COMPLETE 2014-2018

WHITE HOUSE OCTET EASTER EGGS
&
PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION OCTETS



'Easter as Art Structure'

by Anthony Fileccia Giannini

The Octet is available in its complete constellation: five years of jewel-like White House Easter Eggs, created from 2014 through 2018, then deliberately brought to a close. Only a few complete sets remain, and they will never be made again. This is the final chapter of a finished art experiment, praying to God by thinking, creating, making, offering gifts, not opening product lines.

At the heart of the design is the number eight. I chose the octet through introspective dialogue with the passage1 Peter 3:20, where a few, eight souls, are carried through the waters in the Ark. I saw in that image a passage rather than an escape, a transit through danger into newness of life: rebirth and the possibility of mended futures. The octet panels became my way to hold that meaning in metal and light.

At the same time, the octet quietly honors America’s tapestry of belief. The figure eight suggested the Noble Eightfold Path to me: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration, not as doctrine for all, but as a human discipline of integrity, a folded way that any seeker might walk. On a Christian holy day I wanted the form itself to gesture toward plurality, to remind us that the Republic is capacious and that conscience can fold many paths into a common good.

The craft follows the idea. Each egg arises from octet-faceted geometries, finished in 24-karat accents and lustrous baked enamels over heirloom-protected brass and copper, assembled by hand in the White House Gift Shop tradition with intimate pin-in-slot work. Every set is elegantly boxed for safekeeping, includes my signed artist’s statement, and is accompanied by six 5×7 original art prints that interpret a key historical moment aligned with each year in the series. The result is not merely a keepsake, but a small archive that marries object and meaning.

I ended the sequence in 2018 on purpose. The project had done its work. To continue beyond its arc would risk dissolving a meditation into mere commodity. Closing the series protected its integrity and freed me to explore new structures, themes, and materials in my studio practice and across the Shop’s evolving missions. The octet remains whole because it is finished.

If you have followed my work from the beginning, you know these eggs were never about luxury alone. They are about passage: through time, through trial, toward renewal. With fewer than twenty-five complete sets remaining, I invite you to steward one. When you hold the octet in your hands, you hold a circle of crossings, ark and path, craft and conscience, bound to the history of an American house that belongs to us all.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WHITE HOUSE EASTER EGG ROLL

The original site of the Easter Monday Egg Roll was the grounds of the United States Capitol. By the mid-1870s, the egg rolling activities on the West Terraces had gained notoriety as the children turned the Capitol grounds into their Easter Monday playground. The first egg rolls, largely family affairs, seem to have been held during the administration of President Andrew Johnson. Youngsters of the President's family dyed eggs on Sunday for the Monday rolling, which the First Lady would watch from the South Portico. The workers and tourists watched in fascination as the children rolled both their hard boiled eggs and themselves down the lush green hills.

The egg roll activity of 1876 took its toll on the grounds, a fact that did not go unnoticed by members of Congress. With an already inadequate budget to complete the landscaping and maintenance of the grounds, Congress passed a law forbidding the Capitol grounds to be used as a children's playground. The law was to be enforced in 1877. But that Easter Monday rain poured down, canceling any outdoor activities sending the egg rollers indoors to play.

On Easter Saturday of 1878, a small announcement in the local press informed the egg rollers the new law would be enforced. President Rutherford B. Hayes, taking his daily walk, was approached by a number of young egg rollers who inquired about the possibilities of egg rolling on the South Lawn of the White House. President Hayes, upon his return to the White House, issued an official order that should any children arrive to egg roll on Easter Monday, they were to be allowed to do so. That Monday, as children were being turned away from the Capitol grounds, word quickly spread to go to the White House!

President Hayes and his wife, Lucy, officially opened the White House grounds to the children of the area for egg rolling that Easter Monday. Successive Presidents continued the tradition, and the event has been held on the South Lawn ever since.