 For this portrait of George Washington,
painted in 1796 after he had lost all but one of his teeth. Gilbert Stuart padded out the
president’s lips with absorbent cotton to restore the natural lines of the mouth. Detail
of a painting jointly owned by the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, and the National Portrait Gallery |
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| George
Washington’s last dental prosthesis made for him by John Greenwood. The palate was
swaged from a sheet of gold, and the ivory teeth were riveted to it. The lower denture
consists of a single carved block of ivory. The two dentures were held together by steel
springs. National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. |
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