THORNE MINIATURE ROOMS

Mrs. James Ward Thorne MINIATURE ROOMS

In The Permanent Collection Of THE PHOENIX ART MUSEUM Phoenix, Arizona When Narcissa Niblack was a small girl in Vincennes, Indiana, her uncle, Rear Admiral Albert P. Niblack, sent her mementoes of his U. S. Navy tours around the world. Many of these were miniature objects such as tea sets, silver tableware, and tiny furniture. He unwittingly started his niece on a hobby which became a ruling passion and resulted in a unique art form whose finest examples are housed in museums on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Doll houses are not new: indeed, their recorded history goes back to ancient Egypt. The Princess Dorothea of Schwarzburg-Gotha (1666-1751) spent many years having artisans build a doll house castle named Mon Plaisir, which was actually a whole town, peopled with all of the figures who played parts in Bavarian court life during this period. It remains in the museum at Arnstadt as an important historical document.

Many noteworthy people have had doll houses. In recent times, the best known doll houses have belonged to the late Queen Mother Mary of England, grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, and Colleen Moore, the American motion picture actress of silent films, whose fabulous creation is permanently displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

The Thorne Miniature Rooms are NOT doll houses. For one thing, there are no figures in the rooms with one or two exceptions, such as in the Breton Kitchen in the Phoenix Art Museum collection. Doll house furniture is often larger in scale than the one inch to one foot standard to which Narcissa Thorne meticulously adhered.

Many of the Thorne Rooms are exact replicas of rooms in existing great houses in the United States and abroad. In the Phoenix collection, only the English Jacobean Hall, copied from a room in Levens Hall, Westmoreland, is representative of that series of rooms. The remaining rooms faithfully depict the architecture and interior design of their periods and countries.

From the young Narcissa Niblack's collection of tiny bibelots to the final awesome total of about 100 completely authentic miniature rooms made by Mrs. James Ward Thorne during the 1930's, is a true odyssey of world travel, research, and immense creativity which lasted to the end of her life.

During her many trips to Europe and the Orient, Mrs. Thorne found herself irresistibly drawn to shops which had tiny treasures for sale. And it was when she discovered that she had such great masses of these objects and no way to display them that the Thorne Rooms were actually "born."

ITALIAN DINING ROOM

The corner chimneypiece, the old wooden shutters, and the decorated beams of the ceiling of this dining hall were copied from rooms in the Dazanzatti Palace in Florence. On the back wall are two pieces of needlework very rare in quality. They are copies of tapestries, and are made on the finest scrim; the work being done under a magnifying glass. These were purchased in Vienna. Antique shops in Rome and Florence provided the old silver on table and sideboard. Over the credenza is an old painting, worm-eaten and faded, which was found in a dingy little shop on the edge of the Tiber.

In 1930, Mrs. Thorne found that her collection of miniatures was overflowing her Lake Shore Drive apartment, and began looking for ways to display them properly. During this period several major American museums, including the Metropolitan in New York and the Art Institute in Chicago, had begun to display fine examples of period architecture and furniture from Europe and América in full size rooms. Mrs. Thorne quickly realized that perfectly proportioned rooms in miniature with authentic furnishings could be an important adjunct to museums, and would not only be interesting to the average museum visitor, but highly educational to the serious student of design. She engaged a cabinet-maker to build the wooden shells or rooms, and thus embarked upon the first series Of Thorne Miniature Rooms. She soon outgrew her home workshop and rented a studio for herself and her full time craftsmen, who worked with her for a number of years. One did the panelling and mouldings for walls and ceilings, and parquetry for the floors. One woman wove exquisite rugs scaled down to fit the tiny rooms. In 1932, Mr. and Mrs. James Ward Thorne entertained a group of friends at a reception at the Chicago Historical Society, where the original 30 miniature rooms were publicly displayed for the very first time. It was a benefit for the depression-stricken Architectural Students' League. When the Chicago World's Fair "Century of Progress" Exposition opened in 1933, the 30 miniature rooms, housed in their own building, were on display, The soft red carpet and curtains give warmth and cheer to the dark panelled walls, which were so popular in England during this period. The portrait is one of the founders of Oxford. The Cromwell clock on the wall bracket is a copy of one in the Victoria and Albert museum in London, England.

This room illustrates the Louis XVI period, the rococo curves of Louis XV were replaced by straight lines, and the heavy gold furniture, by light woods. The classic revival was beginning. A more pastel quality of coloring was used. The walls of this room are soft gray-green. The furniture is upholstered in peach and green. The paintings at the back and over the doors are copies of Fragonard. The gold consoles and mirrors were found in Paris. The tea set is of old Sevres, as are many of the ornaments. The chandeliers in these three rooms are copied from old models, and the crystals, beads and drops were bought in Paris.

In a secret drawer, in the back of an old French secretaire, Mrs. Thorne found tucked away an original watercolor cartoon of a tapestry. To house this lovely painting a Louis XVI dining room was chosen in one of the well-known chateaux of Fontainbleau. In the cream marble niches stand two exquisitely carved ivory figures, representing Summer and Autumn. The gold consoles and mirrors were found in a frame shop on the Rue Bonaparte in Paris. The bust on the mantelpiece was a bronze letter seal. It has been painted a soft brown, to suggest a terra cotta by the French sculptor, Houdon. The gold table service, the girandoles and ornaments on the sideboard at the back, were found in the most fascinating of all Parisian shops. The furniture was copied from antique French pieces. The rug is Mrs. Thorne's first attempt at fine needlepoint. and subsequently seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Fair. During all the years that these and other Thorne Rooms were exhibited, Mrs. Thorne neither sought nor received any financial recompense. There is no established record of the cost involved in acquiring the objects and furniture which went into the rooms, but it was without doubt a considerable sum. For insurance purposes, the rooms housed in the two museums which have the major collections, are valued at $7500 each. In a number of instances this figure is bound to be lower than actual cost value. The 30 rooms which were seen during the two year run of the Chicago Fair were representative of architecture and design of several periods in American and European history. The rooms in our Phoenix collection were part of that first display. When the British royal family visited Chicago in 1936, Mrs. Thorne was on hand to escort them on a tour of the rooms. As a result of this visit, Mrs. Thorne became aware that Queen Mother Mary would accept the gift of a miniature room. It was decided that the room would be a library modeled after a room in Windsor Castle, and Mr. and Mrs. Thorne were to present it to the Queen Mother during the time of the Coronation of Edward VIII the following year. That Coronation, of course, never took place, but the Thornes traveled to Britain that year anyway, and presented the room, which has its own place in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It survived the World War II bombing raids on London with only minor damage, long since repaired.

By 1937 a second group of 31 rooms was already completed, and these were mainly reproductions of rooms in famous European houses. This group was shown at the San Francisco and New York World's Fairs during 1939-1940. In 1942 a third and final group of 37 American rooms was given to the Chicago Art Institute. Twenty-four of these are re-creations of rooms in existing houses. Among them, “Carter's Grove” is a notable example of how accurately the miniature room reflects the actual room. A comparison of color photographs of the room and its miniature counterpart shows how superbly Mrs. Thorne researched and executed every detail.

During this period there was widespread publicity given to the rooms, including feature articles in many newspapers, a double-page spread in LIFE magazine, etc; and the general public viewed the first two sets of rooms in San Francisco and New York in 1939 and 1940, at the two Fairs.

After the two sets of rooms had toured the country at the various fairs, and had also been seen in Baltimore, Boston, St. Louis, and Washington D.C., the entire collection was given to the Chicago Art Institute in 1942. A wing of this museum houses 68 of the finest examples of Narcissa Thorne's art form. The museum sold the origi-nal 30 rooms to the IBM corporation, and they again toured the country under their auspices and were seen by many thousands of people.

ENGLISH-ADAM DINING ROOM

When Robert Adam returned from his epoch-making trip to Italy, he was imbued with the charm of the "classic" revival of the old Greek and Roman architecture, and he revolutionized English taste. As architect to the King, his word was final on all matters of decoration. In this room, the walls and ceilings are copied from one of Robert Adam's own designs. From a famous collection in Salisbury, Mrs. Thorne bought the plaster medallions which ornament frieze, ceil-ing and over mantel. The walls are pearl-gray, touched with white; the curtains are sunlight yel-low. Some of the silver pieces are very old; others are modern copies. The floor is white marble with border of black marble, and the rug is needlepoint.

DIRECTOIRE ROOM

Napoleon wanted nothing to remind him of the royal magnificence of the deposed sovereign-of France. Everything must be plain and severe, and thus the classic Greek and Roman fitted in perfectly with the new order of things. This room is copied, in color and design, from a watercolor drawing by the famous architect, Bellanger, who designed many houses for the new order of French aristocracy. The walls are pale green, with colorful Pompeian designs, and curtains at the French doors are of apple-green taffeta. On the black marble floor is a rug of the finest needlepoint copied from a Directore design. The harp is a replica of one used by the Empress Eugenie. Through the open door one sees a formal garden. The figure in the center is a French bronze.

In 1962 IBM agreed to return these rooms to Mrs. Thorne. She then selected 16 which she restored to their original beauty and excellence, a remarkable achievement for a woman in her 80's. She managed to recruit several of her workmen from their retirement to help her in this final project. These rooms were presented to the Phoenix Art Museum by Mrs. Thorne and her son Niblack Thorne, as a memorial to Marie G. Thorne, who was Mrs. Niblack Thorne. They are on permanent display.

Nine of the original 30 rooms were given by IBM to the Dulin Gallery of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1962. The rooms were placed on display in 1965, and Mrs. Thorne gave the gallery her permission to title them "Thorne Rooms."

In 1944 the Herron Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, received one room as a gift from Mrs. Thorne in memory of her grandparents, Judge and Mrs. William Ellis Niblack. Her grandfather was a federal judge in Indiana. The room is a Massachusetts Dining Room, 18th Century, because the family originally came to Indiana from Massachusetts.

A number of Mrs. Thorne's friends and relatives have rooms done by her. Some are replicas of rooms in their own homes, such as the living room in Dr. and Mrs. Loyal Davis' home in Phoenix. It is impossible to find out at this late date where all the rooms of this type are located.

Later in her life she made many "shadow box" rooms and decorative boxes and baskets with three dimensional scenes. In this way she continued to use the miniature objects she still had in her possession. Many of these shadow boxes were sold through the Women's Exchange in Chicago for fund raising projects. She made rooms for the Children's Wing of Presbyterian St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, and gave the last of these to the hospital shortly before her death in June, 1966.

It is very interesting to speculate on how a woman like Narcissa Thorne could have gained the knowledge and expertise required to carry out the planning and construction of these rooms. She was a gently bred but not highly educated woman, who married young and enjoyed an active social life. In her youth she was considered to be one of the great beauties of Chicago society. In her middle years she appeared on many lists of the best-dressed women in the Chicago area.

It is obvious that she was a perfectionist, and that she had a great love of beauty and form. Our art heritage is richer because she was able to develop her talent and resources into the miniature masterpieces she created and gave to us all.