Thorne Miniature Rooms go fictional
The Thorne rooms are one of the most famous museum exhibits in the city. They are a collection of 68 rooms contained within glass boxes and are notable because each room is constructed at a 1-inch to 1-foot scale and all 68 rooms together display a range of historical periods from various cultures.
Visitors can see a grand southern dining room just before the American Civil War, or a living room in Salem during the infamous 16th century ‘witch trials’, as well as a drawing room from the Tudor period in England and an ornate ancient oriental room. The possibilities are immense, and the intricate detail is astounding.
Commissioned between 1933 and 1937 by Narcissa Ward Thorne, a Chicago socialite, the rooms remain topical in their appeal, and museum officials say the Thorne exhibit is especially popular with families; sometimes three generations of the same family come to view the exhibit together.
This is an ironic and perhaps even symbolic occurrence, as the miniature rooms cover periods from the 17th century to the ‘modern’ period of the 1930s.
Most recently, however, the Thorne rooms were made immortal by author Marianne Malone who, after falling in love with the exhibit during her childhood, decided to weave them into a fantasy story for young readers, which was published in 2010 by Random House.
“The Sixty-Eight Rooms” tell the story of two eight-graders who discover a way to shrink themselves and enter the miniature rooms, as well as travel between them, all done with the help of a magic key. A sub-plot involving the museum’s security guard provides the momentum for the story and the 68 rooms provide the wonderful setting.
This book, the first of Malone’s to be published, is a whirlwind adventure and provides fascinating detail of what it would be like to not only be miniature, but also to travel between historical periods. It is undoubtedly about time someone utilized the delightful charm of the Thorne Miniature Rooms to create some literary magic, and Malone’s contribution has been very positively received, scoring a 4.5 star rating on Amazon.com.
Her book will serve to expand knowledge of the Thorne rooms to a wider range of people, especially children, whose imaginations will run wild exploring the exhibit. This is the whole point of art, is it not? To gaze at something and allow the mind to wonder, to imagine what is being depicted, to imagine what the artist was thinking or conveying, or, in this case, to look through the glass at a miniature world and wonder what it would be like to be so small.
What’s so lovely about “The Sixty-Eight Rooms” is that, although it is fantasy, it is based on a real place; young readers can visit the Thorne rooms after reading the book and see the world that previously existed only in their minds eye.