Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1928)

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a scottish architect and designer, whose chaste, functional style exerted a strong influence on 20th-century architecture and interior design. Born June 7, 1868, in Glasgow, the influential designer came from humble beginnings. His parents were poor. The Mackintosh family was acquainted with Robbie Burns, who sometimes read at the family dinner table. Although his parents did not encourage his art, at the age of sixteen, he began to apprentice at the Glasgow School of Art.

While he trained at the Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh rejected over-decorated Victorian styles in favour of a spare simplicity that featured geometric shapes and unadorned surfaces. In 1896, Mackintosh won a competition to design the Glasgow School of Art. Characteristic Mackintosh tall-backed chairs, Celtic motifs, and angular lines are evident both inside and outside the buildings. In the same decade, tearooms were the fad in Mackintosh's hometown, and he designed many of these lounges with the famous Cranston chain of tearooms.

Between 1899 and 1910 he designed several houses near Glasgow in this style, but his fame rests primarily on his designs for the Glasgow School of Art (1897-99), with its austere rectangular framework, long, simple curves, and un-ornamented facade. His later addition of a library (1907-09) was based entirely on straight lines and right angles: Its horizontal beams alternate with vertical pillars in a vigorous, rhythmic juxtaposition.

Mackintosh married Margaret MacDonald, whom he met at Art School, and who worked with him on many projects. Together, they designed the Scottish Room for the Vienna Secession exhibition, making a strong impact on the design community in Vienna. He said his wife was the genius of the partnership, while he supplied "only talent."

Mackintosh was also an important interior and furniture designer. His furniture, usually painted white with delicately colored stencils of stylized flower patterns and occasional insets of amethyst glass, combines attenuated straight lines with subtle curves. The designs, although unmistakably Art Nouveau, avoided the excesses found in the work of some Continential practitioners of the style. This appealed to avant-garde designers such as the members of the Vienna Secession. Mackintosh exhibited in 1900 at the Secessionist Exhibition in Vienna, where his designs gained an international following.

His work exerted an important influence on the growing 20th-century trend toward simplification and functionalism. Mackintosh, all but forgotten, died in London, December 10, 1928; decades later, his work achieved a permanent place in the history of design. In the late 1970s the Mackintosh House, his studio-home in Glasgow, was reconstructed and opened as a museum.

Glasgow School of Art

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society