A18: Shaker Living Room, c. 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):

18: Shaker Living Room, c. 1800
With this interior, Mrs. Thorne moved into the unique world of the utopian sect commonly called Shakers, because of the body movements its members engaged in as part of their worship. Founded in England by Quaker Ann Lee, the sect immigrated to North America in 1774, settling in Watervliet, near Albany, New York. After Lee’s death, the first Shaker community was founded in New Lebanon, New York, and the group later established communities in New England, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Leading a highly regulated existence in which equal status was accorded to women and men but celibacy and separatism were imposed in the conduct of daily life, the Shakers numbered about six thousand at their peak around the middle of the nineteenth century. Striving for self-sufficiency, their communities developed innovative agricultural and crafts techniques, first to meet their own needs and, after the mid-nineteenth century, to respond to consumer demands as well. Several Shaker communities are now museums open to the public.
In establishing guidelines for Shaker craftsmanship, Joseph Meacham, Ann Lee’s successor as head of the sect, enjoined that “all things be made . . . according to their order and use,” and “be faithfully and well done, but plain and without superfluity.” These qualities are, indeed, the hallmarks of the originals of the furniture included in this interior by Mrs. Thorne, who gleaned most of her models from illustrations in Edward Deming Andrews and Furth Andrews’s Shaker Furniture (1937).
Mrs. Thorne’s Shaker interior includes a communal living room, a study through the door at the right, and a bedroom at the left. While the main room establishes the sense of order and harmony typical of a Shaker environment, the Shakers actually furnished their rooms far more sparsely and included many more built-in elements. Resembling eighteenth-century English country prototypes, Shaker furniture is distinguished by its fine materials, flawless workmanship, and utilitarian design. A typical piece is the side chair next to the settee, with its turned back posts topped by egg-shaped finials and slat back. Perhaps best known of all are Shaker rocking chairs, an example of which can be seen to the right of the central doorway. Also typical is the secretary—commonly built into the wall—with its clean, geometric lines and turned wooden knobs. Such pieces were constructed of pine, maple, or ash with a natural finish or, in later years, stained red, yellow, blue, or green. The simplicity and efficiency of Shaker furniture, made by dedicated craftsmen who considered the work of their hands part of their service to God, have exerted particular impact on modern American furniture design.
Mrs. Thorne was very proud of the 134 miniature objects she assembled in this interior and its side rooms—more than in any other model.
This room measures 9 x 21 3/4 x 24 5/8 inches.