E30: Chinese Traditional Interior

Narcissa Niblack Thorne, creator of the Thorne Rooms, combined a deep knowledge of design history with a vivid imaginative sensibility. In the 1930s, she assembled a team of skilled artisans in Chicago to construct a series of intricately detailed interiors at the scale of one inch to one foot (1:12).

Conceived as a visual history of interior design, the rooms are at once scholarly and inventive. Meticulously researched and carefully composed, they balance historical accuracy with artistic interpretation. Each atmospheric interior feels like a stage set awaiting its occupants—two parts fantasy, one part history, and entirely absorbing.

Entry from Fannia Weingartner, Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2nd ed. (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2004):

30: Chinese Interior, Traditional
While Mrs. Thorne based many of the European Rooms on interiors that she saw and admired on her trips to England and France, this Chinese setting appears to have been created on the basis of literary sources. The interior’s style is one that evolved over the course of more than two thousand years. Although the Western commercial presence was well established in several Chinese cities by the end of the nineteenth century, few Europeans or Americans would have had direct contact with the prosperous upper-class Chinese who occupied homes with interiors like this one. The kind of life led within such traditional Chinese settings was to be severely affected by the upheavals of World War II, the subsequent civil war, and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
In building their residences, the Chinese followed traditional, fixed plans. While house types differed from region to region, most were organized around central courtyards that provided light and air to the surrounding rooms. The important rooms faced south and were flanked to the east and west by subsidiary ones of identical size and shape. This rigid symmetry in the arrangement of spaces created a desired sense of balance, order, and peace.
Such qualities are evident in the reception room depicted here. The interior is divided into two halves that are in turn separated into smaller areas by wooden screens. Centered on the back wall, an ancestral portrait hangs over a table on which sit candlesticks and decorative porcelains. In the middle space, family treasures would have been stored in pieces like the decorated chests on either side of the doorway. The foreground contains the main area, which would have opened onto the courtyard. The wooden screens, with their elaborately carved panels and fretwork, reinforce the room’s symmetry. The traditional material for most Chinese buildings was wood, used not only for structural elements but also as elegant decoration.
To the left of the main area is a sitting room furnished with a carved teakwood couch and armchair upholstered in rich brocade, and a chest. To the right is a bedroom containing a bed, dressing table, washstand, and full-length mirror set in a carved wooden frame. Both rooms display hanging painted scrolls. Throughout the interior, the elaborately carved teakwood and lacquer furniture is arranged symmetrically in formal groupings.
The foreground room measures 12 1/4 x 21 3/4 x 13 inches.