A Miniature Trip to Versailles

May 11, 2014

We like to bring back mementos from our travels: a postcard from the Grand Canyon, a souvenir spoon from Washington, D.C., a miniature Eiffel Tower from Paris. When miniature artists travel, they bring home inspiration and meticulous notes for their next project; Harry Smith’s mementos helped him craft this room in his beautiful Maine studio (with a little help from his cat).

Smith spent 6,000 hours on Louis XV’s “cabinet intérieur du Roi,” the king’s study or corner room, in the Palace of Versailles. As far as studies of the rich and famous go, Louis XV’s is one of the most luxurious. To create the room, Smith worked with many different mediums and processes. He hand-laid 2,200 individual pieces of wood for the parquet flooring. He hand-carved 3,300 gilded moldings to adorn the walls. He dressed the thirty-arm chandelier with 304 crystals. Each candle in the chandelier and throughout the room is wired to an electronic circuit board, enabling them to flicker at different speeds and intensities. And as if that wasn’t enough, Smith furnished the room with a replica of Louis’s cylinder top desk, which is inlaid with 36 different types of wood. He even carved a tiny key that sits in the desk’s keyhole!