E-11: English Entrance Hall of the Georgian Period, c. 1775

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):

11: English Entrance Hall of the Georgian Period, c. 1775
The Adam Style influenced the efforts of younger contemporaries, including Thomas Leverton and James Wyatt, elements of whose work are to be found in this interior. Mrs. Thorne had been charmed by No. 1 Bedford Square, “a small house of beautiful proportions,” built by Leverton in 1776. The ceiling, plasterwork, floor, and staircase of this hall strongly resemble those in Leverton’s residence.
The anteroom, with its stenciled arabesque design, is done in the manner of James Wyatt, who frequently reflected the Adam brothers’ use of pilasters and sunken panels covered with Etruscan and Pompeian motifs. Painted arabesque decorations had been popular in Italy since the Renaissance, but the extensive archaeological activity there in the eighteenth century led to more careful study of antique originals. The work of such contemporary artist-decorators as Angelica Kauffman and the engraver Giovanni Battista Cipriani, as well as a series of major publications on the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, helped popularize this mode of decoration. The furniture in this hall is based on Neoclassical designs by Robert Adam. The armchairs resemble a gilt Adamesque example of about 1780, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The table in front of the staircase is modeled after a piece depicted in a watercolor by Cipriani and reproduced in Margaret Jourdain’s English Decoration and Furniture of the Later XVIII Century (1922).
The circular rug in the entrance, which repeats the design of the dome above, is a typical Adam device. The cameo plaques forming the base of the candle sconces in the anteroom are miniature examples of Wedgwood jasperware. The winged figure by the front door is made of ivory. Facing the front door within the anteroom is a commode flanked by two oval-back armchairs and surmounted by a mirror in a gilt frame. About this room Mrs. Thorne commented: “Producing in miniature the dainty lunette (above the doorway in the hall) and the iron balustrade was a master stroke in building models of one inch scale.”
The anteroom measures 15 3/4 x 27 x 4 1/2 inches.