State Dining Room - Guests attending formal and informal dinners hosted by the Governor and First Lady dine at a Duncan-Phyfe Empire table in the State Dining Room, located to the right of the foyer. The collection of 24 Chippendale-style chairs features handmade needlepoint seats with 110,000 stitches in each. The ornamental seats were designed by Barbara Delle Gregory of Pine Bluff in 1972, and each displays a different chapter of Arkansas history.
Hanging above the table is a unique Louis XVI chandelier from France, which features a hand-blown bell in the center. This chandelier was not wired for electricity until it was acquired by the Mansion in the early 1970’s by First Lady Betty Bumpers, wife of Governor Dale Bumpers (our 38th Governor).
A Chippendale-style cabinet also was acquired by Mrs. Bumpers and houses part of the 62-piece silver set purchased by the people of Arkansas and given to the Battleship U.S.S. Arkansas. The silver was returned to the Mansion after the battleship was decommissioned in 1946.
The Heppelwhite sideboard, also located in the State Dining Room, is one of the finest pieces of antique furniture to be found in the Mansion. On this sideboard sit some of the larger pieces of the U.S.S. Arkansas’s silver collection, including the silver punch bowl, made from the melted silver of 3,000 silver dollars donated by Arkansas school children.
Governor Rockefeller and his wife, Jeanette Edris Rockefeller, donated the exquisite Persian rug when he left office in 1970.