# A3: Massachusetts Dining Room, 1720

- By: Narcissa Niblack Thorne (American, 1882–1966)
- Date: c. 1940
- Medium: Miniature room, mixed media
- Classification: Miniature room
- Dimensions: External : 52.8 × 118.5 × 54.7 cm (20 3/4 × 46 5/8 × 21 1/2 in.); Internal (main room only): 22.9 × 53.4 × 50.2 cm (9 × 21 × 19 3/4 in.)
- Culture: United States
- Credit line: Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/45320)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/059e91c47a9b39d535b4c0d5a768f26a.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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):

3: Massachusetts Dining Room, 1720 More sophisticated than the preceding interior in terms of its architecture and furnishings, this early-eighteenth-century dining room was based on a 1720s addition to the historic Turner-Ingersoll residence built in Salem in 1668. Nathaniel Hawthorne used this house as the setting for his novel The House of the Seven Gables, published in 1851. A fishing town, Salem…

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0