E-1: English Great Room of the Late Tudor Period, 1550-1603

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.

Mottled light passing through a floor-to-ceiling expanse of handmade glass illuminates the many intriguing details Narcissa Thorne included in this miniature room. Above the ornately carved paneling at the back is a door, the entrance for troupes of musicians who might have provided entertainment from above during a banquet. The portraits and armor that flank the fireplace convey Thorne’s romantic vision of a noble household.

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

1: English Great Hall of the Late Tudor Period, 1550–1603
What intrigued Mrs. Thorne about the late Tudor period was the transformation of England’s feudal castles from “armed strongholds” into “homelike dwellings built for pleasure and comfort,” as she put it. She regarded the “furnishing of the bare and cheerless rooms of these castles [as being] in the nature of a new experiment,” and applauded the English nobility for seeking guidance from Italy, whose artisans had been creating fine tapestries, brocades, and elaborately carved furniture for more than a century. Italian Renaissance motifs and styles also reached England by way of the Netherlands, modified by Dutch craftsmen.
A number of these influences are apparent in this hall, a composite of several admired by Mrs.Thorne. The elaborate ceiling, walls, chimney piece, refectory table, wainscot (paneled) chair, and floor were modeled after examples in Parham Park, Sussex, built in 1577. A recent history of that house points out, however, that while its Tudor paneling is original, the floor is probably from the eighteenth century.
The massive carved screen, topped by elaborate strapwork concealing a minstrel gallery, is copied from Wadham College, Oxford, built between 1610 and 1613. Strapwork (so called because of its resemblance to interwoven leather straps) was very popular in the Netherlands; it incorporates grotesque motifs of classical origin revived by Italian Renaissance artists. A similar screen and gallery are to be found in the hall of Knole Castle, Kent, installed during Elizabeth I’s reign by Thomas, first Earl of Dorset, who employed a private orchestra to play for him while he dined.
The furniture chosen by Mrs. Thorne illustrates the forms available at the time, though inventories from houses of that period suggest that fewer types and fewer pieces would have been used in any single room. The Tudor settle to the left of the fireplace shows how the traditional dower chest (bearing a bride’s dowry) evolved into a seating facility through the addition of a panel back and arms. The carving on the settle and the cupboard (to the right of the fireplace) displays an Italian influence. The base of the slopetop desk by the window bay is modeled on a sixteenth-century piece described in one of Mrs. Thorne’s sources as among “the earliest individual English desks . . . probably made in a monastery to be used as a lectern.”
The portrait above the settle is of Christina, Duchess of Milan (offered as a bride to Henry VIII), after a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger; the one above the cupboard depicts Mary, Queen of Scots. Over the fireplace is a copy of Pisanello’s Vision of Saint Eustache in the National Gallery, London.
Although the armor is of the period of Henry VIII, it is not likely to have been displayed in this fashion. In its total effect, however, the room clearly conveys Mrs. Thorne’s intention. The hall of medieval times—the communal living room of rough-and-ready warriors—has been transformed into a place of comfort, cheer, and some splendor.
This room measures 23 x 25 1/4 x 31 3/4 inches.