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Although Mackintosh
born June 7, 1868, Glasgow
died Dec. 10, 1928, London
Scottish architect and designer who was prominent in the Arts and Crafts
Movement in Great Britain.
He was apprenticed to a local architect, John Hutchinson, and attended
evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. In 1889 he joined the firm
of Honeyman and Keppie, becoming a partner in 1904.
In collaboration with three other students, one of whom, Margaret
Macdonald, became his wife in 1900, Mackintosh achieved an international
reputation in the 1890s as a designer of unorthodox posters, craftwork,
and furniture. In contrast to contemporary fashion his work was light,
elegant,and original, as exemplified by four remarkable tearooms he
designed in Glasgow (1896–1904) and other domestic interiors of the
early 1900s.
Mackintosh's chief architectural projects were the Glasgow School of Art
(1896–1909), considered the first original example of Art Nouveau
architecture in Great Britain; two unrealized projects—the 1901
International exhibition, Glasgow (1898), and “Haus eines Kunstfreundes”
(1901); Windyhill, Kilmacolm (1899–1901), and Hill House, Helensburgh
(1902); the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow (1904); and Scotland Street School
(1904–06). Although all havesome traditional characteristics, they
reveal a mind of exceptional inventiveness and aesthetic perception. By
1914 he had virtually ceased to practice and thereafter devoted himself
to watercolour painting.
Although Mackintosh was nearly forgotten for several decades, the late
20th century saw a revival of interest in hiswork. The stark simplicity
of some of his furniture designs, in particular, appealed to
contemporary taste, and reproductions of Mackintosh chairs and settees
began to be manufactured. The Mackintosh House in Glasgow was
reconstructed and opened to the public as a museum in the late 1970s.
Thomas Howarth, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement (1952;
2nd ed., 1977), is the standard work on the architecture, well
supplemented by Roger Billcliffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The
Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings, and Interior Designs (1979).
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