A10: Massachusetts Dining Room, 1795

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):

10: Massachusetts Dining Room, 1795
“It has not fallen to my lot to meet a man more skilled in the useful art of entertaining his friends than Otis,” wrote John Quincy Adams of Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the three-story brick house containing the dining room that inspired this interior. It is thought to be the first of three houses designed for the prosperous lawyer by the prominent Boston architect Charles Bulfinch. Preceding the John Pierce mansion (see A–7: New Hampshire Entrance Hall, 1799) by some four years, the Otis dining room clearly demonstrates the degree to which Bulfinch was influenced by the Neoclassical designs of English architect-decorator Robert Adam (see E–10: English Dining Room of the Georgian Period, 1770–90).
The Neoclassical note is most apparent in the ornamentation of the mantel and doorheads, exemplified by the cameolike relief against the woodwork and walls, painted in three tones of Wedgwood green. Mrs. Thorne took some liberties in creating her adaptation of this particular interior, among them increasing the space between the windows and changing the number of panes in each window from twelve to fifteen.
For the most part, the furniture reflects a type fashionable when Adam was at the height of his fame in England, some three decades before the construction of Otis’s first house. Derived from Hepplewhite models are the side chairs, armchairs, and the urn-stands flanking the sideboard. Made of wood, each urn actually opens up to reveal an interior fitted out as a knife box, with slots built in to receive the blades of the knives being stored. First used in the early part of the eighteenth century, such items were initially conceived as boxes with slanting tops; the urn—a favorite Neoclassical motif—was adopted later in the century and used as a decorative element by Adam.
It is believed that Otis imported much of his furniture from England. The dining table, sconces, and mirror here are modeled after Adam pieces made between 1775 and 1790. Mrs. Thorne devised the sconces over the fireplace from actual Wedgwood buttons in her collection. The china cabinet is based on an English Sheraton bookcase with ormolu grillwork dating from about 1780 to 1790. The needlework rug, in the Georgian style, derives from an original in the Art Institute of Chicago. The fine silver pieces on the sideboard were made by London silversmiths. The portrait over the sideboard is a miniature oil painting.
Clearly, Otis’s handsome residence, now headquarters of Historic New England (formerly known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities), was admirably suited to entertaining its owner’s prominent friends. Mrs. Thorne’s model conveys the sense of quiet elegance that characterizes the original.
This room measures 12 x 24 x 19 inches.