Development of Mackintosh’s Works in the 1890s

Apart from student competition projects, Mackintosh’s architectural design in the early 1890s began to appear in the Glasgow Herald building (1893-1895). In his personal letter to Hermann Muthesius in 1898, Mackintosh claimed his contribution using evidence from the blank page at the back of his Italian sketchbook (fig. 60), where he had documented a design proposition inspired by his interest in towers.¹⁸³ The Glasgow Herald building was later attributed as Mackintosh’s earliest realized commercial building project, although John Honeyman and Keppie did not publicly name Mackintosh during the process of construction, when he had merely been a young assistant in the firm (fig. 61).¹⁸⁴ The message Mackintosh previously conveyed to us appears to have described the indicative features of later modern architecture. Hinting at the future his lecture titled Untitled Paper on Architecture in 1892, he states “not that I would slight or ignore styles and say with many why not unite the beauties of all in one modern style, for each style has an expression peculiar to itself [sic].”¹⁸⁵ This lecture explained the architectural concept of integrated ornament motifs and the future stylized qualities to be exemplified in the Glasgow Herald building of 1893.¹⁸⁶ There was an introduction of novel elements in an undefined style.¹⁸⁷ For instance, James Macaulay described the puff part of the tower to be “like a gigantic seedhead borne aloft on a multitude of stalks (fig. 62)” for the water storage’s use.¹⁸⁸

183 Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Perspective, from: Mackintosh’s Northern Italian Sketchbook, The Glasgow School of Art, 1891, p. 88 (88 out of 91).

184 Letter from Mackintosh to Hermann Muthesius, 11 May 1898. Wendy Kaplan (as note 9), p. 19.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Glasgow Herald Buildings Perspective, 1894, ink, 911 x 606 mm, The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, inv. GLAHA 41151. His name was not showed in this perspective.

185 Mackintosh, “Untitled Paper on Architecture, 1892,” in: Pamela Robertson (as note 1), p. 198 [E 37].

186 David Walker, “Mackintosh on Architecture,” in: Pamela Robertson (as note 1), p. 165.

187 Ibid.

188 James Macaulay (as note 180), p. 101.

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In the following project, on the one hand, the first construction stage of the Glasgow School of Art of 1896-1899 built Mackintosh’s reputation, showing how distinctive his work was becoming in terms of the new technology’s usage of “central heating, electric light, machined-finished timber, plate glass,” as well as the Glasgow Style deriving from the experiments of the Four.¹⁸⁹ The main protagonists of the Four included Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933), Frances Macdonald (1873-1921), James Herbert MacNair (1868-1955) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Margaret Macdonald and her younger sister Frances’s education and social background prepared them for their roles as artists.¹⁹⁰ They studied day programs at the Glasgow School of Art between 1890 and 1894.¹⁹¹ In the same period, MacNair and Mackintosh participated in evening classes. According to MacNair, evening class students rarely had opportunities to meet day class students; thus, they did not notice the Macdonald sisters until Francis Newbery pointed them out.¹⁹² Observing the similarity in their art performance, Newbery told Mackintosh’s biographer Thomas Howarth that he had suggested the four students should work in collaboration. He was unable to offer a precise date for when the Four was first christened at the Glasgow School of Art Club Exhibition of November 1894.¹⁹³ However, unquestionably, the appearance of the Four at the turn of the century in Glasgow was initiated within the Glasgow School of Art, where students inspired each other using creative aspects of artistic and social life. For Mackintosh, these contacts were important in evolving his treatment of plant motifs and

189 Andrew MacMillan, “A Modern Enigma: A Paradox of Reduction and Enrichment,” in: William Buchanan (as note 17), pp. 51-56.

190 “Registration as ‘day students’ placed the two women into a programme more oriented toward the fine arts or toward the educating of artists than toward the training of artisans or workers….fees for day classes were set slightly higher, with the intention of attracting young middle-class students who can afford the fees, and who were attending the GSA either to broaden their education or to prepare for a career in art,” in: Janice Helland, The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald, Manchester and New York 1996, p. 21.

191 Jude Burkhauser, “The Designers,” in: Jude Burkhauser (ed.), ‘Glasgow Girls’: Women in the Art School 1880-1920, Edinburgh 1990, p. 123.

192 Thomas Howarth (as note 18), p. 25.

193 Jude Burkhauser, “The Glasgow Style,” in: Jude Burkhauser (as note 191), p. 85.

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lines in his subsequent designs. Mackintosh’s architectural ornament of 1897-1899 in Queen’s Cross Church has considerable importance, and is regarded as an example of his intrinsically recognizable visual imagery accompanied with meaningful iconography. The image treatments of the ornamentation he applied to architectural details were similar in feeling to those in his proficient graphic designs throughout 1890s. As earlier mentioned in chapter two, one category of Mackintosh’s early trials was combinations of figures and plant motifs. The wall decorations of the Buchanan Street Tea Rooms kept this category’s characteristic of elongated females figures central to the sinuous plant forms carried out in early 1897 (fig. 63).¹⁹⁴

On the other hand, he created his first white domestic interior design to put emphasis on the qualities of cleanness and lightness at Westdel bedroom in 1898 (fig.

64), removing heavy Victorian decorations (fig. 65).¹⁹⁵ It is observable that the stylization of the form not only applies to one specific space but is also relevant to his contemporaneous designs. In the case of Westdel bedroom, the preliminary experimental use of the motif of the four squares predicts his subsequent geometric patterns.¹⁹⁶ The elements of waving stems with leaves in horizontal line and plants growing from seeds into pink bud on the frieze panel seem to resemble the treatment of the capitals (fig. 47) in Queen’s Cross Church. By using the malleability of wrought iron to express repeated curved lines and plant motifs, Mackintosh translated the graphics into flower-like window brackets with seeds at the base (fig. 66) and the finial in the form of a Tree of Life or Glasgow’s coat of arms (fig. 67) at the Glasgow School

194 Wendy Kaplan (as note 9), p. 19. Design for Stencilled Mural Decoration, Miss Cranston’s Tea Rooms, Buchanan Street, Glasgow, 1896, pencil, watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on board, 36.1 x 75.1 cm, The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, inv. GLAHA 41149.

195 Ibid., p. 20. Design for a Bedroom, Westdel, Glasgow: South Wall Elevation, 1898, pencil and watercolor on wove paper, 23.6 x 43.1 cm, The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, inv. GLAHA 41106. Specimen drawing room at Wylie and Lochhead’s showrooms, Buchanan Street, Glasgow, 1900, from: Wendy Kaplan (ed.), Charles Rennie Mackintosh, New York 1996, p. 43.

196 Roger Billcliffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings and Interior Designs, New York 1986, pp. 52-53.

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of Art. Following Owen Jones’s rule that ornaments are attached to architecture, the major concern of this chapter is first to understand the status of architecture in the role of ornament designs throughout Mackintosh’s architecture.¹⁹⁷ Mackintosh’s attention to the definition of architecture and craftsmanship was expressed through his interest in the writings of John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Richard Lethaby (1857-1931), and perhaps affected the application of his ornament designs.¹⁹⁸ Mackintosh was already distinctively good at draughtsmanship when he early apprenticed in the firm of John Honeyman and Keppie. In 1890s, he was invited to deliver two lectures on the subject of contemporary architecture for an unknown literary society, which can demonstrate the development of his ideas. In the two lectures, he indicated his thinking on how much he had been influenced by Ruskin and Lethaby, and their contents were later concluded in an Untitled Paper on Architecture in 1892 and Architecture in 1893.¹⁹⁹ Of Ruskin’s seven architectural principles, beauty derived from “the laws of natural forms.” David Walker stated that Mackintosh adopted the principle of beauty and replaced the other six of sacrifice, truth, power, life, memory and obedience with stability and utility, the three of which later became the main qualities of architecture that he emphasized in his Untitled Paper on Architecture.²⁰⁰ In fact, Mackintosh’s architectural thought can be traced back to Vitruvius’s perspectives in The Ten Books

on Architecture (De Architectura Libri Decem), which were based on an understanding

venustas) – described in section two of chapter three in book one.

197 Owen Jones (as note 92), p. 4.

198 Mackintosh, “Untitled Paper on Architecture, 1892,” “Architecture, 1893,” in: Pamela Robertson (as note 1), pp. 180-211.

199 Ibid.

200 David Walker, “Mackintosh on Architecture,” in: Pamela Robertson (as note 1), p. 158. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, sixth edition, London 1889, p. 105. The lamps include sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience in The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

201 Vitruvius, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, The Ten Books on Architecture, Cambridge 1914, p.

17.

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The lecture titled Untitled Paper on Architecture presents his survey, which drew heavily from Ruskin-derived ideas. Although there is no absolute standard that accounts for everyone’s taste, the assessment of beauty is performed by a well-educated mind. The architectural sculpture needs to be intelligible to the viewer through his or her knowledge and feelings, otherwise, it becomes meaningless.²⁰² Thus, it is worth mentioning that Mackintosh consciously chose to decorate the fronts of his buildings.

In addition, the lecture titled Architecture was given to formally quote from the central notion of Lethaby’s introduction in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, in which architecture is thought to be “the commune of all the crafts,” as exemplified in Mackintosh’s lecture, Scotch Baronial Architecture, by the assertion that architecture shows how arts combine in one building, as well as developed in Architecture.²⁰³ Based on the above mentioned, Ruskin’s writings on his observations of plants and Lethaby’s thoughts on architectural details with symbolic origins as stylistic elements, Mackintosh absorbed the principles of plant evolution and assimilated them in his ornament design structures.²⁰⁴