Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow in 1868 and died in London on 10th December 1928. His personality is one of those that characterize the period immediately preceding the Modern Movement.

His name is mainly connected with the design for the Glasgow School of Art: he was the animator and most authoritative exponent of the group known as the “Glasgow School” and he distinguished himself principally because he recovered the most authentic values of the Scottish idiom and of neo-Gothic taste.

The group, also named “the School of Ghosts”, became known throughout Europe – in Liege in 1895, London in 1896, Vienna in 1900, Turin in 1902, Moscow in 1903, Budapest etc.Besides the School of Art, the most interesting works are undoubtedly: the “Windyhill” house at Kilmacolm (1900), the “Hill House” at Helensburgh (1902-3), the arrangement of the Derngate house, Northampton (1916-20), and the decorative work in Miss Cranston’s Tea-Rooms in Glasgow. Among the furnishings of his decorative interiors, it is above all the chair – an object of special attention in the “Cassina I Maestri” collection – which represents the focal point for coordinated spatial action.

Within it, the controlling force of the composition is always resolved, sometimes articulated in fluent and delicate forms, at other times in severely geometric forms.