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Inspiration from Artists Week 139 Featuring Artists : Allanson Hi k and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
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Posted
CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868 - 1928) was born in Glasgow and began his career as an architect. To complement this he enrolled for evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art, and a travelling scholarship allowed him to undertake an architectural tour of Italy. As well as architecture, he experimented with a range of decorative forms, producing designs for furniture, metalwork, and the graphic arts, including highly stylised posters and watercolours, often in partnership with a fellow student, Margaret Macdonald, later to become his wife. Margaret herself was a versatile artist and had a marked influence on her husband’s work and career, but after their marriage she signed few of her works, which were subsequently often attributed to her husband.
In 1896 he was commissioned to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art, which was to be his master work. The leaded glass windows on the door of Studio 45 featured the stylised ‘Mackintosh rose’ motif that he is so well known for today. (Unfortunately fires in 2014 and 2018 severely damaged the building. Phased work is now underway to restore it to its original design, although this is not now expected to be completed by the original 2030 deadline.)
In 1904 the publisher Walter Blackie commissioned him to design a substantial home, The Hill House, which was externally simple, yet internally the use of colour and decoration were carefully conceived, and he was given the freedom to provide a ‘total design’, including furniture, light fittings and wall decorations.
Despite recognition in Europe, his work met with indifference at home and his career declined. In 1914 he resigned from his practice and moved to London with his wife, but with the onset of war, his plans for a suite of artists’ studios was never realised. A move to the south of France in 1923 signalled the end of his three-dimensional career and the last years of his life were spent painting.
Floral designs (signed by both Charles and Margaret Mackintosh)
Harvest Moon
Rose window design
House for an Art Lover
Washstand for blue bedroom at Hill House
Blanc Ontoine (oil painting)
Harvest Moon
Rose window design
House for an Art Lover
Washstand for blue bedroom at Hill House
Blanc Ontoine (oil painting)
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
One of my favourite designers Jenny. I visited House for an Art Lover late last year and Hill House this summer, there aren’t words to describe what this talented pair conceived in architecture, design and style……breath taking.
Rather than taking examples of their work from the internet I’ll add my own photo’s……only snapped on my phone so apologies.
Posted
Thanks, Fiona, for adding your photos - it’s so much more interesting to see his work in the setting it was designed for. The design of the sofa back cover is particularly interesting, although the seating looks a bit low - wonder how practical some of his furniture designs were for everyday use. (Our local art society gave a very interesting talk on his life and work last year, and I think one of the comments made then was that perhaps comfort and practicality weren’t uppermost in his mind when designing some of the furniture, especially the very stylish, but rather tall, very straight backed chairs.)
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
If you'll forgive a slightly crass comparison - his furniture designs do sometimes put me in mind of IKEA: they look a lot better than they feel - speaking with feeling here as I'm about to ditch an IKEA bed, and am looking forward to attacking its carcase with an axe, as it's the most uncomfortable coffin-like construction I've ever tried to sleep in. Design must incorporate use if it's intended to be used, and not just to sit there in your room looking austerely beautiful - of course, the comparison won't work, because nothing IKEA ever made can stand comparison; but design triumphed over function; to that extent there's a (far-fetched) similarity.
But - despite all that: the Mackintosh designs, like those of William Morris, were about bringing colour, shape and form into domestic settings, if you take "domestic" as far as the word will stretch. It was and it remains a noble endeavour, and many of Mackintosh's designs, and paintings (if Blanc Ontoine is an oil painting, it looks as if he used a lot of turpentine) are almost incomparably beautiful. It's sad that his influence on architecture was not greater than it transpired to be - we wouldn't have so many hideously ugly buildings.
