CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH
1868 - 1928

The name of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who has been described as "a genius ahead of his time", is now seen as synonymous with the Art Nouveau movement.

He began his working life in Glasgow, the city of his birth, as an articled apprentice architect with the firm of John Hutchinson. From 1889 he continued his work with Honeyman and Keppie, spending his time as a draughtsman, working on the designs of qualified, senior architects. He also attended evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art, studying such related subjects as Mathematics, Mechanics, Building Construction, Geometry and Perspective. But while giving him a good basic foundation, all this formal training offered Mackintosh little opportunity to nurture any artistic creativity that he possessed.

However, his mastery of the skills needed for architectural and technical drawing were soon noticed and he went on to win many awards and some of the highest prizes in the field at both local and national levels. His drawings began to appear in professional press publications, displaying both virtuosity and considerable technical skill.

Because sketching was so vital to his development as an architect, Mackintosh travelled around Scotland, England and Italy, sketching historic architectural sites. It is believed that these field trip exercises nurtured the development of his latent expressive and artistic talents. His drawing became less rigidly technical and this became evident in his studies of flowers and plants. While still strongly concerned with their structure and form, his treatment was also sensitive and delicate, showing what was later to become a lifelong fascination with the relationship between natural and man-made forms. Mackintosh was to become much influenced by Japanese art and the stylised techniques used in drawing and painting plants and flowers.

The most architecturally outstanding and famous building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh was his design for the Glasgow School of Art, erected between 1897 and 1909. It was seen as both radically modern and uncompromisingly aesthetic. It was practical, functional and artistic and the dynamic simplicity of its design became a model for many future architectural designs.

Mackintosh's talent for interior design can be seen in the now famous Cranston Tea Rooms of Glasgow in Argyle Street, Ingram Street, Buchanan Street and the Willow Tea Rooms. Here, it was not just the floor, walls, doors and windows - the shell of the venture - that concerned Mackintosh; it was also the importance of the space within those elements and what filled that space, that became as important as the initial idea itself. The Tea Rooms showed how Mackintosh designed a project as 'a whole'. He considered the furniture, the textiles, the fittings, the ornamentation and décor colour and texture to be of equal importance to the whole. All the elements were designed for one specific place, in order to build the ambience for which he was striving. He succeeded in creating atmospheric interiors of such elegant sophistication that the Cranston Tea Rooms became some of the most popular and fashionable venues in Glasgow during the Edwardian era and onwards.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been described as a consummate designer and draughtsman who, by using the architectural rigidity and severity of squares and oblongs interwoven with the gentle subtlety of the curves and tracery of Nature - came to represent and typify the style of the Art Nouveau movement. His work is easily recognisable, with his frequent use of motifs such as the stylised rose, seen in so many of his projects - a trademark of simplification, abstraction and symbolism. He used mediums such as glass, lead, metals, wood, ceramics and textiles in his designs for such diverse items as furniture, doors, windows and cutlery.

The revival of interest in his work is a tribute to his skill as a designer in that his use of shape and form can be adapted to so many different modern items. They are still deceptively simple and yet so pleasing to the eye.