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…
contrary forces were forced to live together: the old and the new, the city and country, science and religion, the local and the cosmopolitan.
Mackintosh’s name has become synonymous with the blossoming of Art Nouveau, a style marked in the verticals of his high-backed chairs or the graphic patterning of his building-fronts. His work anticipates that purity and structural integrity now identified with modernism. The white interiors, bold handling of materials and enlightened practicality point firmly in the direction of the new design age. Inspired by nature and the traditions of Scotland, his genius was to achieve a remarkable degree of syntheses between the decorative and the structural.
His buildings are inseparable from what they contain: every element is considered in its relation to the whole. Art Nouveau upheld the idea that all the arts should work in harmony to create a total environment. The idea of ‘a total work of art’, or gesamtkunstwerk, was live. The designer became an orchestrator of every artifacts that created a room. Mackintosh’s Willow Tea Rooms, opened in 1903 in the fashionable
Sauchiehall Street, were a triumph of this concept. The street name’s translation, ‘alley of the willows’, provided an evocative metaphor on which the entire work is based.
Mackintosh created the architectural structure, interiors, their furnishings, controlling every
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
aspect of the design down to the white uniforms and elegant menus. He stated “Modern architecture, to be real, must not be an envelope without contents,” (Wilhide, 1995, 23).
Emulating Art Nouveau, he believed that all the arts should work in tandem; if the objects of everyday existence contained poetry, then the mass of people might partake of poetry,
(Battersby, 1969, 21).
Modern designers looked towards honesty to nature and organic forms. Additionally, historical styles such as the curvilinear and swirling Rococo, as well as the simple and ordered art of Japan were appropriated to the modern age. Their use of asymmetry, the repetitive natural forms, the dedication to femininity, and the absence of religion are all modernist traits that are significant throughout the Willow Tea Rooms. The emergence of tea rooms was a development of the industrial expansion of Glasgow which brought enormous social change. The temperance movement was a result of increased drunkenness accompanying industrialization. There was a need for places where workers could unwind in a sober condition. Meanwhile, tea rooms provided a genteel environment for women who were now venturing out of the home unchaperoned. Such establishments as the Willow Tea Rooms catered for the needs of both sexes.
With its graphic border of chequered squares (Image 1), windows of mirrored glass, decorative wrought ironwork and pristine finish, the Willow Tea Rooms were a picture of startling modernity in
1903. Internally, without a single partition wall, Mackintosh created three distinct areas: the front saloon, the rear saloon and the gallery. The skillful sequence
1. Chequered facade of the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
from one distinct area to another, with views in every direction through open screens and stairs, displayed a truly modern manipulation of interior space.
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
joiner-made
Arts and Crafts furniture (Kaplan, 1996, 272).
Painted mirrors (Image 3) and decorative
3. Painted mirrors at the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
leading (imitating Japanese outline prints) ran around the upper rooms. The imperfect stained glass is a response to the Arts and Crafts movement in which natural flaws are a valuable result of truth to material. Mackintosh said “There is hope in honest error, none in the honest perfections of the mere stylist” (1902), portraying a truly modernist outlook.
Mackintosh’s vision took aspects of Art Nouveau and formulated something more rigorous from it. He asserted that modern architecture should consist of ‘designs by living men for living men’ (Wilhide, 1995, 42), depicted in the totality and practicality of his work.
Nonetheless, he shared beliefs with the likes of Pugin who insisted that ornament should enrich a building’s construction (Wilhide, 1995, 38), an integral element of Mackintosh’s work ethic.
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
Bibliography
Battersby, M. (1969) Art Nouveau. Feltham: Hamlyn
Billcliffe, R. (1986) Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings
& Interior Designs. New York: E.P. Dutton
Greenhalgh, P. (2000) Essential Art Nouveau. London: V&A
Jones, A. (1990) Charles Rennie Mackintosh. London: Studio Editions 1990
Kaplan, W., Mackintosh, C.R. (1996) Charles Rennie Mackintosh. New York: Abbeville Press
Wilhide, E. (1995) The Mackintosh Style: Decor & Design. London: Pavilion.
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Image Sources
Image 1:
Tea For Two
Published: 2012
Source: http://thechatterjis.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/tea-for-two/
Image 2:
Exquisite Architecture and Design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Published: 2011 (Edited: 2014)
Source: http://arthistory.knoji.com/the-design-of-charles-rennie-mackintosh/
Image 2:
The Willow Tea Rooms
Published: 2004 (Edited: 2010)
Source: http://digilander.libero.it/LauraCamilla/D1.mackintosh.htm
Diane Meyler
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…
contrary forces were forced to live together: the old and the new, the city and country, science and religion, the local and the cosmopolitan.
Mackintosh’s name has become synonymous with the blossoming of Art Nouveau, a style marked in the verticals of his high-backed chairs or the graphic patterning of his building-fronts. His work anticipates that purity and structural integrity now identified with modernism. The white interiors, bold handling of materials and enlightened practicality point firmly in the direction of the new design age. Inspired by nature and the traditions of Scotland, his genius was to achieve a remarkable degree of syntheses between the decorative and the structural.
His buildings are inseparable from what they contain: every element is considered in its relation to the whole. Art Nouveau upheld the idea that all the arts should work in harmony to create a total environment. The idea of ‘a total work of art’, or gesamtkunstwerk, was live. The designer became an orchestrator of every artifacts that created a room. Mackintosh’s Willow Tea Rooms, opened in 1903 in the fashionable
Sauchiehall Street, were a triumph of this concept. The street name’s translation, ‘alley of the willows’, provided an evocative metaphor on which the entire work is based.
Mackintosh created the architectural structure, interiors, their furnishings, controlling every
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
aspect of the design down to the white uniforms and elegant menus. He stated “Modern architecture, to be real, must not be an envelope without contents,” (Wilhide, 1995, 23).
Emulating Art Nouveau, he believed that all the arts should work in tandem; if the objects of everyday existence contained poetry, then the mass of people might partake of poetry,
(Battersby, 1969, 21).
Modern designers looked towards honesty to nature and organic forms. Additionally, historical styles such as the curvilinear and swirling Rococo, as well as the simple and ordered art of Japan were appropriated to the modern age. Their use of asymmetry, the repetitive natural forms, the dedication to femininity, and the absence of religion are all modernist traits that are significant throughout the Willow Tea Rooms. The emergence of tea rooms was a development of the industrial expansion of Glasgow which brought enormous social change. The temperance movement was a result of increased drunkenness accompanying industrialization. There was a need for places where workers could unwind in a sober condition. Meanwhile, tea rooms provided a genteel environment for women who were now venturing out of the home unchaperoned. Such establishments as the Willow Tea Rooms catered for the needs of both sexes.
With its graphic border of chequered squares (Image 1), windows of mirrored glass, decorative wrought ironwork and pristine finish, the Willow Tea Rooms were a picture of startling modernity in
1903. Internally, without a single partition wall, Mackintosh created three distinct areas: the front saloon, the rear saloon and the gallery. The skillful sequence
1. Chequered facade of the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
from one distinct area to another, with views in every direction through open screens and stairs, displayed a truly modern manipulation of interior space.
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
joiner-made
Arts and Crafts furniture (Kaplan, 1996, 272).
Painted mirrors (Image 3) and decorative
3. Painted mirrors at the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
leading (imitating Japanese outline prints) ran around the upper rooms. The imperfect stained glass is a response to the Arts and Crafts movement in which natural flaws are a valuable result of truth to material. Mackintosh said “There is hope in honest error, none in the honest perfections of the mere stylist” (1902), portraying a truly modernist outlook.
Mackintosh’s vision took aspects of Art Nouveau and formulated something more rigorous from it. He asserted that modern architecture should consist of ‘designs by living men for living men’ (Wilhide, 1995, 42), depicted in the totality and practicality of his work.
Nonetheless, he shared beliefs with the likes of Pugin who insisted that ornament should enrich a building’s construction (Wilhide, 1995, 38), an integral element of Mackintosh’s work ethic.
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Diane Meyler
Bibliography
Battersby, M. (1969) Art Nouveau. Feltham: Hamlyn
Billcliffe, R. (1986) Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings
& Interior Designs. New York: E.P. Dutton
Greenhalgh, P. (2000) Essential Art Nouveau. London: V&A
Jones, A. (1990) Charles Rennie Mackintosh. London: Studio Editions 1990
Kaplan, W., Mackintosh, C.R. (1996) Charles Rennie Mackintosh. New York: Abbeville Press
Wilhide, E. (1995) The Mackintosh Style: Decor & Design. London: Pavilion.
Modernity: The Willow Tea Rooms, 1903
Image Sources
Image 1:
Tea For Two
Published: 2012
Source: http://thechatterjis.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/tea-for-two/
Image 2:
Exquisite Architecture and Design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Published: 2011 (Edited: 2014)
Source: http://arthistory.knoji.com/the-design-of-charles-rennie-mackintosh/
Image 2:
The Willow Tea Rooms
Published: 2004 (Edited: 2010)
Source: http://digilander.libero.it/LauraCamilla/D1.mackintosh.htm
Diane Meyler