The reception for donors to the State Department’s beautiful Diplomatic ReceptionRooms brings guests from all over the country who each year add to the suite’s collectionof 18th- and 19th-century antiques.

This time, as Director Gail Serfaty said in her opening remarks, “We know you are here not justto see the treasures of the State Department, but to see a treasure of a secretary of state.”

Secretary Colin Powell, who hosted the event with his wife Alma, did not disappoint. He told ofhis love of the rooms’ beauty, speaking of himself as a nuisance showing up unexpectedly at odd hoursto show off the suite to appreciative audiences ranging from the diplomats, for whom it wasintended, to—in one case—a group of school kids waiting in the lobby to hear a lecture.

He stressed that not one penny of taxpayer funds went into the historic and priceless adornmentsof the room, recognizing the efforts of the Fine Arts Committee and its new Chair—SusanKlein.

There were 350 guests at the lavish reception (and Gail Serfaty had before sent a discreet letter sayingthat although for twenty years the minimum contribution to attend had been kept at $500, it hadto be raised to $1,000).

“Magnifique!” best describes the seven-course dinner presented recently by eleven topWashington chefs at La Maison Francaise of the Embassy of France, where former White Housechef John Hanny’s book Secrets From the White House Kitchens made its debut.

Sponsors of the gala fundraiser to benefit two nonprofit local groups, the charitable Foundationof Le Comité Tricolore and the D.C. Central Kitchen, were L’Amicale Culinaire de Washington,Le Comité Tricolore, and the Consul General of France and Madame Gilles Montagnier. Jan DuPlain arranged the evening, which was a smashing success.

Guests at the Embassy of the Netherlands literally tiptoed through the tulips as they climbed thebroad steps to the front door, flanked on every riser by Holland’s best-known blooms. Inside thefoyer, both sides of the grand staircase were tulip-lined up to the main level where Ambassador JorisVos and flower-bedecked platters of “fusion cuisine” awaited, laden with pan-Asian delicacies reminiscentof the Netherlands’ former Asian territories.

No one wants to miss this floral fantasy held in mid-April, even over-scheduled fellow ambassadors go tosome trouble to be there (at least a dozen of the diplomats and their spouses were in attendance this year).

A rollicking good time was had at Esther Coopersmith’s terrific barbecue honoring Graceand Sen. Bill Nelson, (but then, Esther has had a lot of practice, as her nationwide barbecues for LBJhelped get him elected President).

The merrymakers included Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Rep. Steve Earl,Carol Lascaris (who was Grace Nelson’s college roommate), Ina Ginsburg, Senator and Mrs.Robert Graham, Willee and Finlay Lewis, Coca-Cola’s Janet Howard, and up from Atlanta, democraticfundraiser extraordinaire Bruce Keiloch, and Delphine Daft, wife of the chairman and CEO ofthe Coca-Cola Company. Others included the Larry Presslers, writers Richard and Sarah Booth(the Chronicler) Conroy, Richard Solomon, Dr. Rita Colwell, Jack Krumholtz, director of governmentaffairs for Microsoft, and Barbara Hayward (who has aided the refugees of Kosovo, and isarranging leadership courses for a group of Kosovan women to help them enter careers).

Esther, a former U.S. delegate to the United Nations, is as active internationallyas she is in domestic politics, and ambassadors and wives were out in force: from Austria,Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, Egypt, Italy, Japan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Portugal,Singapore, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen.

In a witty tour de force of memory, Esther amazed everyone by going about the room and introducingeach of the 70 guests with an amusing or intriguing comment. Threatened showers moved the partyindoors from its planned spot on the veranda, but as one ambassador remarked, it only made the gatheringcloser and cozier (not surprisingly, it was Ambassador Moser of Austria, whose country has theword for it—gemütlich.)

The Nelsons are Esther’s longtime friends. Bill, newly-elected to the Senate from Florida, was hereearlier as a member of the House.

A leading Congressional expert on NASA, he chaired the Space Subcommittee on the Science,Space and Technology Committee, and putting his courage where his chairmanship was, Bill underwentintensive training and flew as a crew member on the 24th Space Shuttle flight. He’s showing the same spiritin the Senate, taking leading positions on key issues.

His striking wife Grace won kudos for her heartfelt remarks at the party. One guest commentedknowingly that Bill Nelson is a freshman senator to watch, reminding a circle of listenersthat Esther had twice before been first to herald two obscure governors—one named Carter, the otherClinton.

Esther entertains often and well in her handsome Kalorama mansion, which has been homeearlier to the Hamilton Robinsons, to Sarah andHerman Wouk, and to Polly Guggenhim Logan (who sold her Albemarle St. N.W. estate to theItalian government for their embassy, so she could move here).

A few weeks earlier, Esther gave a party celebrating the first novel of an imaginative and hardworking ladywho’s a darling of the Forbes Richest list, Caroline Rose Hunt, sister of the famous Hunt brothers.

Proceeds from her book, Primrose Past—a charming tale set in 1848 with a mystery at itsheart—are given to different institutions in the places that hold signings. (Here it was launched atthe National Museum of Women in the Arts.)

The string of award-winning luxury hotels under Caroline Rose Hunt’s Rosewood Hotels andResorts aegis stretch from the famed Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and London’s poshLanesborough to Jakarta’s Dharmawangsa.