A35: California Living Room, c. 1935–40

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):

35: California Living Room, c. 1935–40
Santa Barbara's magnificent mountain and ocean views and fair climate have made it, since the late 1890s, one of America’s favorite retreats from winter. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a significant number of buildings in and around the city were constructed in a freely interpreted Mediterranean style that evoked the area’s Spanish Colonial heritage. The greatest practitioner of the Spanish Revival style was architect George Washington Smith, who was active in the Santa Barbara area from 1916 to 1930.
Smith’s popularity was due to his successful adaptation of the Spanish Colonial or Mission styles to contemporary use, incorporating flexible plans, romantic details, and arrangements sensitive to the surrounding landscape. Inspired by the string of missions established by the Spanish in California from the sixteenth century on, Smith combined in his interiors the Moorish and southern European elements that characterize Spanish architecture, such as the timber-work of the ceiling, the carved and gilt door, the elaborately patterned tiles on an around the staircase, and the gleaming floor tiles in this interior.
The furniture assembled in this room reflects the eclectic taste prevalent in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. While many of the heavy, dark wood pieces suggest Spanish prototypes from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the four-chair-back settee departs from the Spanish-inspired idiom, as do the Far Eastern jars on the chest at the left and the large modern table lamp at the right.
Undoubtedly, Mrs. Thorne was familiar with rooms like the one she created in this model. Not only did interior-design magazines of her time feature articles about the decoration of fashionable California resort homes, but many of her acquaintances and friends wintered in Santa Barbara and nearby communities and lived in environments similar to this one.
This room measures 12 1/4 x 29 7/8 x 23 inches.