Charles Rennie Mackintosh

The Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of the main protagonists of the British Arts and Crafts movement in the late 19th century. His timeless furniture designs are as widely recognised as the ground breaking buildings he often created them for.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh: a biography

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born on June 7, 1868, in Glasgow, Scotland. It was there that he began his apprenticeship with the architect John Hutchinson, while at the same time taking evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. From 1899 to 1913 Mackintosh worked in the office of the architects Honeyman and Keppie, where he began some of his early architectural projects, such as the Glasgow Herald Building and the Glasgow School of Art.

In 1900, Charles Mackintosh founded the Glasgow Four, together with his future wife, Margaret Macdonald, and together they formed a key part of the artistic circle surrounding the Glasgow School. Margaret Macdonald’s work blended art and design together much like Mackintosh’s, and had a lasting influence on the Art Nouveau movement and on artists such as Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.

Mackintosh's architectural projects were mainly limited to Glasgow and the surrounding area. In 1903 he completed the Hill House, a mansion designed for a wealthy publisher and his family, for which he also created the Hillhouse Chair, along with many other pieces of furniture and interior fittings.

Mackintosh's Hill House

In 1902 Charles Rennie Mackintosh was commissioned by the Glasgow publisher Walter Blackie to design and build the Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland. Mackintosh was also responsible for the interior design of the house, a task he took up with great enthusiasm. The Hill House is a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, filled with with iconic furniture, objects and textiles designed by Rennie Mackintosh and Macdonald. The building and its contents do not easily fall into a single architectural style, but combine motifs of the Arts and Crafts movement with Art Nouveau and Japanese influences. Today, the Hill House and the Glasgow School of Art are considered to be Mackintosh’s greatest works.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Chairs

Rennie Mackintosh designed some chairs chairs specifically for his buildings, including the Willow Chair for the Willow Tea Rooms, the Argyle Chair for the Argyle Street Tea Rooms, and of course, the Hill House Chair. Designed by Mackintosh in 1903, the Hill House Chair is named after the Hill House and was created exclusively for the bedrooms of the house. The geometrical, clear lines of the Hillhouse Chairs stand in stark contrast to the rest of the bedroom furniture, which is entirely white. Mackintosh was inspired by Japanese architecture and paintings when he created the chair, and its tall, stylised back was aesthetically groundbreaking at the time.

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