Cranbrook House Oak Room Cartouche Panels

A band of sixty unique wood panels encircles the upper register of the walls of the Oak Room at Cranbrook House. They were carved by William F. Ross & Co. of Cambridge, Massachussetts, after designs by the German-American woodcarver John Kirchmayer, whose own studio supplied the linenfold paneling for the lower walls as well as the panels in the Cranbrook House library.

Each oak panel holds an oval cartouche, surrounded by decorative scrollwork. Two heads in profile, of humans, animals, or fantastic creatures, in the upper corners, and two cornucopia, spilling flowers or fruit, in the lower corners, complete the design. Henry Scripps Booth, youngest son of George and Ellen Booth, claimed that the addition of fanciful heads to the panels was his suggestion to the woodcarvers. The panels were completed in December 1920, just in time for the Booths to celebrate Christmas in the Oak Room.

Forty of the cartouches have since been painted with individual designs, each symbolizing an event in the history of Cranbrook or the Booth family. The custom was begun by Henry Scripps Booth in 1921, who continued adding designs in his own hand, or by commissioning other artists, throughout his life. Since his death in 1988, the tradition has been carried on by the Cranbrook Educational Community, with the most recent cartouche painted in May 2023.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow

Kevin Adkisson
Curator
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
December 2024