The Smoking Room
This light-filled room was fitted out with wicker furniture and used by the prince as a smoking room, according to the accounts of the children of the wardrobe mistress, who lived in the House of the Owls from 1916 to 1939.
The bow window, which looks out onto the park, was decorated with wood panelling carved with roses, repeating the theme of the garlands of flowers found on the high strip of the walls of the room.
The window was added to the nineteenth century construction in 1910 and contains stained glass decorated with garlands of flowers and ribbons. The glass was made by Cesare Picchiarini and involves coloured pieces of glass laid in sheets over transparent glass. However the technique he used for this is still uncertain.
The room also contains several works by Paolo Paschetto, who was a native of Torre Pellice, the son of a Waldesian shepherd who had moved to Rome. Paschetto created many designs for stained glass for Methodist and Waldesian churches in Rome. The sketches for these, with their characteristic biblical themes, are displayed here.
Some of the sketches have floral and other decorative subjects, such as the “Rose and Butterfly” designs, which were preparatory sketches for the stained glass in the “Balcony of Roses” on the upper floor of the House of the Owls.
In the middle of the room are displayed a series of pieces of stained glass created by the artist for his own house in Via Pimentel in Rome. They have simple geometrical patterns around a central square containing figured decoration on biblical themes.
The stained glass, made in 1927 by Cesare Piccharini for the lunch room, each consist of two ante with lunettes. Opalescent glass was chosen for the subject, in contrast to the transparent background, making the subjects depicted immediately recognisable.
For the lunettes, however, Paschetto chose the motif of a loose ribbon, which he had already experimented with in numerous other decorative solutions.
