Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
A desire to convince the world that “there are things more precious... more lasting than life itself” (1902) was the driving force of modernist advocate Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
He has been hailed as one of the most important precursors of the Modern movement
(Wilhide, 1995, 7). This was a style born of the society’s transformation through the modernization of existence. At the time, cities swelled in a spectacular urban revolution leading to generations viewing their ‘natural’ environment to be one of bricks and steel.
Beyond the city, commerce and technology took control of society and made it selfconsciously cosmopolitan. It was a complicated style for a complicated age, when many …show more content…
These interconnected areas delighted Modernists such as Pevsner who described Mackintosh as “the European counterpart” of Frank Lloyd Wright (Kaplan,
1996, 276) . The front ladies’ tea room was
2. Mackintosh’s staple flat rose motif.
decorated in feminine colours of white, silver and rose. A plaster relief frieze of stylized
willows, again borrowing symbolism from nature, paneled the upper walls. The back saloon was of a darker, natural palette with flat, Japanese-like rose motifs (Image 2). In the gallery, columns supported the exposed beams of the ceiling - the raw construction being an ideal of the Arts and Crafts movement. Above the front saloon on the first floor was the luxurious Room de Luxe where entry was by means of elaborate stained-glass doors, whose form are reminiscent of the Japanese kimono shape (Jones, 1990, 188).
Throughout were metals panels twisted into shapes of abstraction, exemplary of modernism, from which hung green glass balls referencing willow trees. Mackintosh’s staple high-backed chairs broke up the repetitive vista and created a sense of enclosure. His furniture was influenced by the ostentatious simplicity of
Diane Meyler
A desire to convince the world that “there are things more precious... more lasting than life itself” (1902) was the driving force of modernist advocate Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
He has been hailed as one of the most important precursors of the Modern movement
(Wilhide, 1995, 7). This was a style born of the society’s transformation through the modernization of existence. At the time, cities swelled in a spectacular urban revolution leading to generations viewing their ‘natural’ environment to be one of bricks and steel.
Beyond the city, commerce and technology took control of society and made it selfconsciously cosmopolitan. It was a complicated style for a complicated age, when many …show more content…
These interconnected areas delighted Modernists such as Pevsner who described Mackintosh as “the European counterpart” of Frank Lloyd Wright (Kaplan,
1996, 276) . The front ladies’ tea room was
2. Mackintosh’s staple flat rose motif.
decorated in feminine colours of white, silver and rose. A plaster relief frieze of stylized
willows, again borrowing symbolism from nature, paneled the upper walls. The back saloon was of a darker, natural palette with flat, Japanese-like rose motifs (Image 2). In the gallery, columns supported the exposed beams of the ceiling - the raw construction being an ideal of the Arts and Crafts movement. Above the front saloon on the first floor was the luxurious Room de Luxe where entry was by means of elaborate stained-glass doors, whose form are reminiscent of the Japanese kimono shape (Jones, 1990, 188).
Throughout were metals panels twisted into shapes of abstraction, exemplary of modernism, from which hung green glass balls referencing willow trees. Mackintosh’s staple high-backed chairs broke up the repetitive vista and created a sense of enclosure. His furniture was influenced by the ostentatious simplicity of