They were used with great success on state occasions and were so convenient that other people adopted the invention, so that wine _coasters_, after the Washington design, became a part of the furniture of every fashionable sideboard.
To cool wine, meat and other articles, Washington early adopted the practice of putting up ice, a thing then unusual.

In January, 1785, he prepared a dry well under the summer house and also one in his new cellar and in due time had both filled.

June fifth he "Opened the well in my Cellar in which I had laid up a store of Ice, but there was not the smallest particle remaining .-- I then opened the other Repository (call the dry Well) in which I found a large store." Later he erected an ice house to the eastward of the flower garden.
His experience with the cellar well was hardly less successful than that of his friend, James Madison, on a like occasion.

Madison had an ice house filled with ice, and a skeptical overseer wagered a turkey against a mint julep that by the fourth of July the ice would all have disappeared.

The day came, they opened the house, and behold there was enough ice for exactly _one_ julep! Truly a sad situation when there were _two_ Virginia gentlemen.
Mention of Madison in this connection calls to mind the popular notion that it was his wife Dolly who invented ice-cream.