E9: English Drawing Room of the Georgian Period, 1770–1800

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):

9: English Drawing Room of the Georgian Period, 1770–1800
Mrs. Thorne thought of this as her “Hepplewhite” room, commenting, “I have chosen a very simple, late Georgian room, painted white, to be the background for Hepplewhite’s diversified types of furniture.” George Hepplewhite, an English cabinetmaker, owes much of his reputation to his trade catalogue The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, published by his widow in 1788. This book depicts various types of furniture in the styles current during the latter years of Hepplewhite’s life, some modified by him to render construction of the pieces less complex. Some of Hepplewhite’s finest designs are in the style of the Adam brothers, particularly Robert (see E-10: English Dining Room of the Georgian Period, 1770–90), whose Neoclassical interior decorations and furnishings were highly fashionable in England in the 1760s and 1770s, and later in France and in America as well.
The efficient simplicity of the pieces displayed in this room made them particularly satisfying and appealing to Mrs. Thorne. She was pleased by “the grace of line and beauty of contour” of Hepplewhite’s designs, noting, however, that he “often followed the extravagances of French designers and in many of his pieces there is a suggestion of Louis XV and Louis XVI in chairs, settees, and consoles.” These French influences can be seen in this interior in the lacquered commodes flanking the fireplace and in the oval-back armchairs upholstered in blue. The shield-back chairs, drum-top table, drop-leaf sofa table, and secretary date from the last decade of the eighteenth century. (The casters on the settee actually rotate.) The commodes derive from ones made around 1770 for the Marquess of Salisbury’s Hatfield House. Hepplewhite recommended the use of satinwood, which he often inlaid with other exotic woods.
On the floor is a reproduction of an English version of a rug in the style made originally in the French carpet factories at Aubusson. The fireplace overmantel was inspired by an original (c. 1730) from Marlow Place, in Buckinghamshire, illustrated in Margaret Jourdain’s English Interiors in Smaller Houses (1923). Finely tooled, leather-covered books fill the large library case and are scattered on each of the three tables beside the flower-filled vases. The sconces on the back wall are inset with genuine Wedgwood medallions. From the 1760s on, the Wedgwood factory, one of England’s most important potteries, produced elegant wares in the Neoclassical style that were immensely popular both in England and abroad.
This room measures 17 x 25 x 34 inches.