This black and white image is of Abby Gunn Baker, a journalist and amateur historian who was asked by Colonel Theodore Bingham, the man in charge of public buildings and grounds during the McKinley administration, to write an article on presidential china. Mrs. Baker spent four months at the White House in 1901, studying the surviving pieces and also records held by different offices of the White House and the government. Her article was published in Munsey's Magazine in December of 1903, and her passion for the subject lead to her returning to the White House when Mrs. Edith Roosevelt officially created a White House China Collection. Mrs. Baker was deeply involved in the acquisition and preservation of White House China until her death in 1923.