American Rooms in Miniature by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, September 1, 1949-January 2, 1950

Narcissa Niblack Thorne was born on May 2, 1882 in Vincennes, Indiana. Her family later moved to Chicago when she was still a child. She was both homeschooled and attended a public school, finishing at the Kenwood Institute. On May 29, 1901, she married her childhood sweetheart, James Ward Thorne, the heir to the Montgomery Ward department store fortune.

Thorne’s interest in miniatures began with a childhood love of dollhouses and the trinkets sent to her by her uncle, a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Due to the high unemployment rates of the Great Depression, she was able to hire workers with highly specialized skills to fashion the miniatures she designed. The first known exhibition of her work was in 1932, and most of her exhibitions were held privately and for the purpose of fundraising for local charitable causes. In 1933, at the Century of Progress Exposition, Thorne’s works were publicly exhibited in a dedicated building. She subsequently exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and 1940 New York World’s Fair. In 1936, she received a request to make a miniature library depicting a room at Windsor Castle, to mark the planned coronation of Edward VIII; although the coronation never occurred, she delivered the room and it was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Despite the time-consuming nature and high expenses associated with creating these miniature rooms, Thorne never sought or received payment for any of them. When her husband died in 1946, she was left with an estate worth more 2 million dollars, which enabled her to continue doing this work. However, a shortage of sufficiently skilled workers forced her to shift her focus to dioramas and shadow boxes. In 1945, when a permanent gallery was established for the Thorne miniature rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago, she set up a fund to cover the costs for collections care.

Thorne closed her studio in March 1966 as a result of her failing health; she died June of that year in Chicago. Prior to her death, her remaining works were donated to charity and she herself had arranged for thirty rooms to be auctioned off for charity in 1963. Most of her works are currently held by Museums.

Approximately one hundred Thorne rooms are known to exist. The Art Institute of Chicago holds 68 Thorne rooms, which originally occupied a dedicated wing but are now housed in a large room in the building's lower level.[7] An additional 20 are held by the Phoenix Art Museum,[8] and nine by the Knoxville Museum of Art. The remaining two are at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and the Kaye Miniature Museum in Los Angeles. In addition to these, a bar that Thorne auctioned off for charity in the 1950s is at the Museum of Miniature Houses in Carmel, Indiana.

Source:
Wikipedia contributors, "Narcissa Niblack Thorne," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Narcissa_Niblack_Thorne&oldid=1081787354 (accessed July 28, 2023).