A5: Massachusetts Drawing Room, 1768

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):

5: Massachusetts Drawing Room, 1768
It is a far cry from the simplicity of the preceding interior to this elegant drawing room modeled after an original in the Jeremiah Lee mansion in Marblehead. Settled by fishermen from the Channel Islands, the coastal town became a prosperous fishing and merchant community. Although the early settlers of New England had been disappointed in the rocky terrain of their new home, many, like Jeremiah Lee, found great opportunities in activities related to the sea. A shipowner and merchant, he reputedly spent some ten thousand English pounds to build his mansion in 1768, borrowing architectural ideas and elements from England. It is believed that the woodwork of his parlor, richly carved in the tradition of the English architect Sir Christopher Wren (see E–4: English Drawing Room of the Late Jacobean Period, 1680–1702), was inspired by Abraham Swan’s British Architect or the Builder’s Treasury (1745).
When it opened to the public, the Jeremiah Lee mansion was sparsely furnished. Thus, in arranging this interior, Mrs. Thorne chose to follow her own predilections, taking her cue from the architecture of the room and from information that Lee had imported much of the contents of his house from England. The furniture here is predominantly in the Queen Anne style. Among the most striking pieces are the tall case clock and secretary Mrs. Thorne acquired from Arthur Punt, the famous London miniature dealer. Made of walnut burl, they are exquisitely wrought replicas of English originals. Both have functioning parts: the clock can be opened and wound, and each drawer of the secretary (which also houses a secret compartment) can be opened and closed with ivory knobs the size of pinheads. The sofa was copied from an original made around 1740 and depicted on a postcard from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The stand (on which a book rests) in front of the window at the left toward the back of the room is Chippendale in style. The needlepoint rug was copied from an English design, and the draperies are of damask.
The door to the right leads to a wallpapered hallway. The use of wallpaper became more widespread in America after the mid-eighteenth century. Jeremiah Lee imported from England special wallpaper painted entirely in tempera. Lee’s wallpaper featured panels showing figures in a pastoral landscape including ancient ruins, a type of scene that recalls the paintings and prints of the eighteenth-century Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini. The paper between the panels emulated plasterwork in the form of Rococo scrolls and trophies. While Americans continued to import prized wallpapers from England, France, and Holland, they also began to manufacture their own, beginning with a factory established in 1739 by upholsterer Plunkett Fleeson in Philadelphia. Early American papers relied heavily on copies of European designs.
On the small table in front of the fireplace is a fine chess set carved in ivory. The two portraits on the right wall are antique miniatures.
This room measures 12 1/8 x 25 7/8 x 21 inches.