Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. He was a designer in the post impressionist movement, and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. From Wikipedia
THE GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART
WIDELY regarded as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece, it was hailed by a rector of the Royal College of Art in London as “the only art school in the world where the building is worthy of the subject”. In designing the building, the interiors and the furnishings, Mackintosh created a dramatic fusion of Scots baronial architecture, art nouveau flourishes and Japanese simplicity. Light and space abound with inspiring decorative motifs drawn from nature for the benefit of generations of art students. The most lavish and decorative space, a library of dark oak panelling with light shades like art-deco skyscrapers, was consumed in a recent fire and will require total restoration. Lively and informative tours by art students will resume when the building reopens. More: www.gsa.ac.uk.
THE LIGHTHOUSE
THE story of a boy from the east end of Glasgow with an awkward limp who became a celebrated style icon of his native city is related in a permanent exhibition in the first public work he completed. The life and extraordinary talent of Mackintosh (1868-1928), architect, designer and artist, is explored in the building he created for The Glasgow Herald newspaper, and is now Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture. A narrative tour examines his finest architectural works, but look out for models based on his designs that were never built. They include a magnificent exhibition hall with spires and towers evocative of a Star Wars film set, and a railway terminus that would have been a splendid homage to the romance of travel. More: www.thelighthouse.co.uk.(pictured above)
THE WILLOW TEA ROOMS
MACKINTOSH’S most loyal patron was Kate Cranston, proprietor of four Glasgow tea rooms that he either designed or restyled. The biggest project was the design of the building, interior layout and fittings of the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street. From the outset it was an elegant social centre where bourgeois men and respectable women could meet separately in rooms for dining, reading and writing, and to play billiards or smoke. The main attraction is the Room de Luxe, a glittering salon of silver furniture with light flooding through panoramic windows and reflecting from leaded mirror friezes. It was so exclusive patrons paid a penny more for the privilege of taking tea in it. Nowadays there is no extra charge. More: www.willowtearooms.co.uk.
KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY
THE creative talents of Mackintosh and his wife, decorative artist Margaret MacDonald, are displayed in vestiges of another of Miss Cranston’s tea rooms in a gallery devoted to artists grouped in the so-called Glasgow Style. Imagination, whimsy and traditional skills are evident in furniture, decorative panels and light fittings, notably for a Ladies’ Luncheon Room. Natural light was used to shimmer around the white-painted room with vertical stripes of aluminium leaf on the walls, creating a fairytale effect. A highlight is The Wassail, a large gesso wall frieze that Mackintosh worked on while his wife produced a companion piece. He later commented: “Margaret has genius and I only have talent.” More: www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/kelvingrove.
HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
IF ever a person of artistic taste desired a country retreat for lavish entertaining in sophisticated surroundings, this is it. That was the brief when Mackintosh submitted drawings for a competition by a German design magazine in 1901. He didn’t win, but the house was eventually built in 1996. While Mackintosh drew the plans, his wife Margaret embellished the interiors with exquisite stencils, embroideries and gesso panels. The result is a dreamy white creation drawing inspiration from its parkland setting. The main hall is said to resemble a mature forest with cool light and thick pillars, while the music room, which is the centrepiece of the house, is reminiscent of a young woodland glade with dappled sunlight and tapered pillars leading up to green leaves. This masterpiece also houses a fine restaurant. More: www.houseforanartlover.co.uk.
SCOTLAND STREET SCHOOL MUSEUM
THE laughter and songs of children echo through the classrooms and corridors of Mackintosh’s last major commission in Glasgow in audio and video memories of a lost age when little ones played games in streets instead of on computer screens. School days must have been happy in this splendid building with banks of south-facing windows designed to flood classrooms with maximum sunlight and solar heat. Several have been recreated to show how they would have looked from the Victorian era until the school closed in 1979. Mackintosh’s mastery of light and space is evident in soaring leaded glass stair towers and a tiled drill hall, and his artistry in stonework carved with art nouveau motifs. The magic is in the detail and the nostalgia. More: www.visitscotland.com.
THE MACKINTOSH CHURCH
ONLY Mackintosh could have invested a church for the dour Protestant Free Church of Scotland with a warmth and charm conspicuously absent from places of worship of the period. Soft blue light filters through a great Blue Heart window of stained glass that dominates the chancel, the spiritual and visual focal point of the church. The simplicity of the barn-like preaching hall with its great barrel vaulted ceiling pleased Free Church elders, but Mackintosh adorned it with quirky decorative details, notably abstract bird and botanical imagery in the pulpit. The congregation vacated the building in 1976 and it is now houses the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, with an information centre and library. More: www.mackintoshchurch.com.
THE HILL HOUSE
RISING high on a hill overlooking the Firth of Clyde, this concoction of Scottish baronial and art nouveau is universally regarded as Mackintosh’s finest domestic creation. Commissioned by a wealthy Glasgow publisher in the seaside town of Helensburgh, the house and its interiors are works of art. Light and shade abound in contrasting images — the lower hall appears as a dimly lit clearing in a dark forest, leading to the drawing room where curved windows produce a symphony of light playing on pillars. This magical place is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. More: www.thehillhouse. nts.org.uk.
THE MACKINTOSH HOUSE
THE home in which the Mackintoshes lived was demolished in the 1960s, but interiors and furnishings of their apartment have been meticulously reassembled in the Hunterian Art Gallery of Glasgow University. The artist-architect and his wife lived in art they created, illuminated wherever possible by natural light. Devoid of gloomy Victorian clutter, rooms are filled with white, spacious calm and whimsical touches of colour from stained-glass panels. Trademark furniture with sculptural detailing inspired by plant and bird forms include the four-poster bed that Mackintosh designed as a wedding present for his wife in 1900. It is adorned with tiny glass lenses which, in the morning sun, cast coloured light on to the bed — a typically Mackintosh romantic flourish. More: www.glasgow.ac.uk/hunterian.
BEST BEDS
THE GRAND CENTRAL HOTEL
GRANDEUR meets contemporary style at the hotel chosen by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society as the base for four-day tours of Mackintosh sites in September and October. The star-crossed lovers of David Lean’s Brief Encounter would feel at home in this landmark Victorian railway hotel that forms part of Glasgow Central Station. Notable guests have included John F. Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II and Frank Sinatra. The A-listed building reopened to much acclaim in 2010 following a £20 million refurbishment. Its grand interiors evoke a more romantic age. Neutral shades with tartan notes in 183 standard and deluxe guestrooms foster a warm, cosy ambience. More: www.thegrandcentralhotel.co.uk.
www.crmsociety.com
By Gavin Bell
With thanks to The Australian
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