E-5: English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period, 1702-14

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): 5: English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period, 1702–14In spite of its designation as a Queen Anne–period room, Mrs. Thorne admitted “that the kitchen which I have reproduced is in the character of Anne Hathaway’s cottage [in Stratford-on-Avon]. It has timbered and plastered walls—a large open grate for cooking, and its mullioned windows look out upon an English garden in full bloom. I have visited [this] home many times, and to me it is one of the most appealing shrines of England.” She had also visited the Cotswold weavers’ cottages made over into weekend retreats by well-to-do Londoners of her own time who had, in her words, “gone bucolic.” Like them, she took an eclectic approach to decorating, for although it was inspired by an Elizabethan model, this interior is furnished with pieces from later periods.The linen fold-paneled settle by the fireplace and the stool (used as a table) beside it were inspired by seventeenth-century examples, while the Queen Anne dresser copies an eighteenth-century type. For the most part, such pieces would have been built of oak, although walnut, elm, and fruitwoods were also used for country furniture. Hoop-and-spindle-back Windsor chairs like the ones included here were popular throughout the eighteenth century, with yew, a wood that lent itself to being bent, being used to make the hoops.Many of the menial household tasks in a house of this sort would have been carried out inthe scullery, so that the kitchen essentially served as a living room and was furnished accordingly. The wooden ware for daily use would have been kept in the scullery, while the dresser in the kitchen would have contained family treasures—pewter, china, and Staffordshire figures (Staffordshire ceramics were actually not prevalent until the late eighteenth century). The mantel shelf would have served the same purpose, displaying shiny cooking utensils and implements as well.The flagstone floor indicates that the cottage would have been built directly on the ground with no cellar. During medieval times, loose rushes and straw were strewn over the stone floors in both fashionable and ordinary households. The woven rush mattings used subsequently were out of fashion by the mid-seventeenth century. Single widths of various materials served as runners. The hooked rugs included by Mrs. Thorne in this cottage are out of place: hooked rugs were an American invention popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.The window looks out onto a flower-filled garden and the thatched roofs of neighboring cottages.This room measures 10 x 19 1/2 x 16 1/4 inches.