Miniature Thorne Rooms Reinstalled at KMA

Tuesday, 08 August 2006 13:10

Knoxville, TN - The Knoxville Museum of Art’s nine miniature Thorne Rooms have been restored, with generous underwriting from Sherri Lee in honor of Mrs. McAfee Lee, and were recently reinstalled at the museum.  Small is big news at the KMA.

“The KMA’s Thorne Rooms are among America’s most well-known miniature diorama groups,” said Dana Self, Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

These nine original Thorne rooms were given to Knoxville’s Dulin Gallery of Art, the KMA’s predecessor, in 1962 by IBM.  The company previously had purchased 29 Thorne Rooms.

The KMA’s Thorne Rooms, named after Mrs. James Ward Thorne who developed them in the 1930s and 40s, contain many of the miniature objects collected by Thorne during her youth and on her travels.  The KMA is one of five museums in the country that have a collection of Thorne Rooms.

The KMA’s nine Thorne Rooms were restored by Eva Sander-Conwell, a Tennessee objects conservator. 

Thorne, a native of Chicago, Ill., loved dollhouses as a child.  After extensive travels in Europe where she collected miniature furniture and accessories, Thorne had over two dozen miniature rooms created by cabinetmakers from her own drawings.  They were made in a scale of one inch to one foot.  She painted and stained woodwork, papered walls, and made textiles for the rooms.

The rooms were displayed at several World’s Fairs.  In 1933–1934 they were displayed at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition.  In 1939 they traveled to San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition, and in 1940 they were displayed at the New York World’s Fair.

Later, Thorne created 29 more rooms, copying Europe’s castles, museums, and historic homes.  She commissioned architects to create historically accurate settings and had textiles and carpets made by the Needlework Guild of Chicago.  The rooms, tracing English and French style 1500–1920, were exhibited in 1937 at the Art Institute of Chicago.  In 1942 Mrs. Thorne gave a third and final group of Thorne Rooms to the Art Institute.  Those 37 rooms offered a view of American History, 1675–1940.

Visit the Knoxville Museum of Art at : http://www.knoxart.org/