Dining Room

The Dining Room extends across the entire north end of the first floor. Measuring 50 feet by 30 feet, the room is grand and spacious. The walls are finished with parcel-gilt full-height walnut paneling, rising to a seventeenth-century coffered ceiling salvaged from an Italian palazzo. The large stone fireplaces are from Paris and Florence. Carved in the 16^th century, one illustrates scenes from the Judgement of Paris, and the other bears the Medici family coat of arms. The extension table at the center of the room seats up to eighteen.

The most important furnishing in the dining room is the large carpet—a rare Persian (Isphahan) carpet. Measuring nearly twenty by forty feet, it is one of the largest Islamic carpets in existence. Thought to be nearly 400 years old, this carpet was the single most valuable object in the house, and likely remains so today.

The central panel of the ceiling was commissioned from the American artist Edward Simmons (1852-1931). Simmons was trained in Paris and was a leading figure of the American Impressionist movement. He was an accomplished muralist whose works survive in several important buildings, including the New York Supreme Court, the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

 

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Furnishings of Note

 

VAMA 698

Grand Orrery

This grand orrery, one of a pair, was made in the eighteenth-century by George Adams of London, Scientific Instrument Maker to King George III. The orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system.

 

VAMA 711

Bronze Andiron

This imposing nineteenth-century patinated bronze andiron (one of a pair) is in the Renaissance style and measures nearly four feet tall. It is decorated with a winged-lion finial, emblematic of St. Mark, and numerous enslaved figures surmounting the tiered base.