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Originally published Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 12:00 AM

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Visual Arts

SAM Sneak Peek | The Italian Room: Step into another place and time

Some 400 years after it was constructed in the village of Chiavenna in northern Italy, a wooden room with a carved ceiling has found a new home at Seattle Art Museum.

By Sheila Farr

Seattle Times art critic

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This is the first in a series of items previewing attractions to come at Seattle Art Museum, which will reopen in May after a major expansion.

Some 400 years after it was constructed in the village of Chiavenna in northern Italy, a wooden room with a carved ceiling has found a new home at Seattle Art Museum. It's possible the room, made primarily of spruce and fir, once served as an apothecary shop, says Julie Emerson, SAM decorative-arts curator. On the walls you can see photocopies of maiolica plates — decorated tin-glazed ceramic — that will be displayed there.

The museum's lead conservator, Nicholas Dorman, has been involved at each step of the room's puzzlelike reconstruction: mapping, documenting, cleaning and condition-reporting every board before it was placed. With advice from a specialist at the Metropolitan Museum in New York,

Seattle Art Museum reopens May 5, First Avenue and Union Street (206-654-3100 or www.seattleartmuseum.org).

Dorman also arranged for the construction of a chestnut-board floor and stone fireplace suitable to the period and place. The room was a gift from Richard Brown, in memory of his late partner, Portland architect John Yeon.

sfarr@seattletimes.com

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