A20: Virginia Dining Room, 1758

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):

20: Virginia Dining Room, 1758
Some sixteen years before he designed the house from which the preceding interior was derived, William Buckland served as architect for Gunston Hall in Fairfax County, ordered by George Mason. Buckland had first come to the Colonies under a contract of indenture to Mason’s brother; his success in Virginia led to commissions in Maryland. The author of important resolutions voicing the Colonies’ opposition to the imposition of taxes by the British and a coauthor of the Constitution, Mason named his house after an ancestral home in Staffordshire, England.
In 1866 the house passed from the Mason family to a succession of occupants. The last private owners, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hertle, undertook various improvements and renovations before deeding the house to the Commonwealth of Virginia. In her model, Mrs. Thorne included several of the decorative elements introduced by them, such as the pagoda roofs over the closet doors and the large overmantel, although these have since been removed from the actual dining room. Nonetheless, the symmetry and decoration of the model strongly resemble those of the original. Gunston Hall’s dining room was one of the first in the Colonies to be decorated in what was known as “the Chinese taste.”
Since there is no record of the original furnishings, Mrs. Thorne used adaptations of Chippendale pieces, including examples in the Chinese manner depicted in various publications (see E–8: English Bedroom of the Georgian Period, 1760–75). In Chinese Chippendale furniture, the cabriole leg is replaced by a straight leg, as in the pieces shown here. Also characteristic of the style is the use of fretwork as seen on the apron of the serving table against the left wall and along the base of the sideboard at the right. The center table copies one from the late eighteenth century. The sideboard, displaying a pair of knife cases, candlesticks, and a covered tureen, is topped by an elaborate mirror modeled after a Chippendale design. The room features many silver objects; the bases of the basket on the table and of the tureen on the sideboard are made of silver Liberty dimes, and the wine coolers on the serving table are made of nineteenth-century French centime pieces.
The original dining room did not include the Chinese wallpaper; the walls were plastered white, the woodwork (including the cornice, dado chair rail, and door- and window-sash trim) was painted yellow, and the baseboards dark brown.
This room measures 13 1/4 x 19 3/4 x 21 1/8 inches.