Charles Rennie Mackintosh
House for an Art Lover by dalbera
No visit to Glasgow would be complete without a bit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Glasgow’s architecture is defined by the sudden influx of capital in the Victorian period. Wherever you go in the city, you will find Grecian/Egyptian stylings, Renaissance parodies, and Baroque re-imaginings. These may be impressive now, but for critics like John Ruskin they were the height of arriviste vulgarity. Worse still, the pagan associations were frivolous, effete, and quite out of keeping with Victorian values. Ruskin encouraged a homegrown architecture that was integrated with nature and it was his influence that laid the ground for the arrival of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Born in 1868, Mackintosh was a sickly child who drew thistles and flowers in the countryside while other boys played sports. With the MacDonald sisters and Herbert MacNair he formed “The Four“, a group of artists influenced by the delicate beauty and exotic minimalism of the Japanoiserie that had begun to circulate in Britain. Mackintosh joined the firm of Honeyman and Keppie as a draughtsman in 1889, where he refined his unique combination of natural light and minimalistic ornamentation on such jobs as Martyrs’ School and the Herald Building (now the Lighthouse), becoming a partner in 1901.
Architect, graphic designer, interior decorator, and creator of radical furniture, Mackintosh’s singular vision demanded an extraordinary level of integration (much to the chagrin of the Glasgow Corporation who butchered his plans for the Scotland Street School). He was a pure design auteur, who brought something distinctively his to everything from spoons to staircases. The first thing that strikes you about Mackintosh’s designs is that they are like no one else’s. The light shades in the Glasgow School of Art library are weird cuboid things. His chairs look so distorted they might be from a surrealist painting. The rooms recreated in the Hunterian Museum are profoundly moving due to the tension between minimalism and ornamentation.
His presence in Glasgow, via ubiquitous Mockintosh (sic) lettering, tourist knick-knacks, and four (at least partly devoted) museums, is everywhere. Despite his ubiquity, it is hard to find many Glaswegians whose interest in Mackintosh goes beyond the financial. His dandyish moustache, billowing bowtie and general aestheticism do not sit well with their chippy common sense. Indeed, although he was briefly fashionable in his native city, his career ended in disappointment as commissions dried up and he turned to the bottle.
Further Reading: Ten Best Stops on the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Tour
A different version of this piece appeared in the 2006 Time Out Guide to Edinburgh.
About Neil Scott
Neil Scott is the designer and creator of Visit Glasgow. He works as a web designer.
wonderful, beautiful. Mackintosh most of had some influence on the bauhaus and destijl schools of design and architecture. I became a modern(as opposed to post modern)lover of design some quarter a century ago. I also love brutalism. I am impressed by the engineering of post modern architecture of leaning diagonal vertical leaning buildings. two face each other i do believe in Spain. no not by Gehry whose amorphous buildings i don’t care for. I mean the leaning buildings of Leibskind et al.(sorry for the spelling errors). the leaning structure was first conceived by Tatlin and some other members of the Russian Avant Garde.
But I am a lover of modernism which is an age past. Worst of all are these new houses witch must costly to heat or cool are these quasi lodge-Georgian at least the windows which are horrible compared to original Georgian windows.
Some of my favorite architects are Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van Der Roe and the like. Sorry i can’t remember the British architects who created Brutalism.
I am a rectangle with an addition which forms an L shape horizontally guy. even though i could never afford such. i live in a small square house but thank god the wall are matt wife. after many years of living in cheap apartments with tacky 1970’s dark crappy paneling, It was really depressing. im disabled and on below the poverty level disability benefits.
well i’ll stop my insomniac ramble for your sake and mine.
very grateful for this webpage Mr. Neil Scott
dahszil
male
usa(i hope and pray for the dismantling of the US empire and formation of a truly free republic as a loving, equal, peaceful member of the world’s family of nations)