Charles Rennie Mackintosh (person)

Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Or: Not Just a Pretty Font

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in addition to being always referred to by his full name, was a notable Glaswegian architect and designer, and a slighly less notable Glaswegian painter. He rose to obscurity in the early part of the 20th Century, his work being generally unappreciated until years after his death.

While alive, he rebelled against the predominant movement of superficial stylism, using rectilinear structures and subtle curves. Probably why he wasn't much liked in generally conservative England.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of the story.

First Things First

Not much to report of his early childhood--let's just say he was thinking.

• June 7, 1868: Mackintosh born into a family of eleven children, all being raised on a police superintendent's salary in the Townhead area of Glasgow, Scotland. The poet Robert Burns is often at the family dinner table; hopefully, he had a small appetite.

  As soon as he could be, CRM was educated at Allan Glen's school.

On the Make

CRM got started on his career quite early, fleeing his overcrowded home to go to an arts school. So much for practicality.

• 1884: At sixteen, he enrolls in night classes at the Glasgow School of Art, whereat he meets Margaret McDonald, her sister Frances, and Herbert MacNair.

  Together, the they become known as "The Four."

• 1885: CRM is apprenticed to John Hutchinson.
• 1889: He joins the architectural firm of Honeyman and Kepple. All this while still taking classes, and at the age of 21.
• 1890: CRM takes home the Alexander 'Greek' Thomson travelling scholarship. Thomson was another famous architect who worked in the Greek style. Not, as the name would suggest, a gangster.
• 1892: He wins the national silver medal and then
• 1893: The national gold.

The 'Spook' School

The Four's collaborative efforts in metalwork, illustration, and furniture design is influenced by the style of Aubrey Beardsley. Often bizarre abstract imagery and metamorphic lines are incorporated into their work.

In England, at the time, these Scottish imports were scaring the normals. Art nouveau, though gaining in popularity on the Continent, was still a non-non across the Channel, and CRM's influential contributions to it were viewed through suspicious eyes.

Though that didn't stop him building buildings.

Building Buildings

The bulk of CRM's architectural achievements came in a relatively brief though undoubtedly intense burst of creative output; he worked hard through the turn of the century, getting his first major gig at the age of 28.

• 1896: He wins the competition to design the new wing of his own alma mater.
• 1897: Construction begins, keeping him more or less occupied for the next two years.
• 1900: After waiting sixteen years, he marries Margaret McDonald. He'd already known her half his life.
• 1901: Plans are completed for Haus eines Kunstfreundes, the House for an Artlover. They build it near Parkland in Glasgow. To look at it is not to think of 1901.
• 1902: The same can be said for Hill House, built above the Clyde in Helensburgh. The house--along with its gardens and furniture--were commissioned by Walter Blackie, director of the Glasgow publishers.
• 1903: The wealth socialite Miss Catherine Cranston funds the design and construction of the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street.
• 1904: He makes partner at Honeyman and Kepple.

Despite all of these domestic successes, he still wasn't too well thought of in the UK. Continentally, they loved him--his room at the Turin Intemational Exhibition in 1902 opened to enthusiastic support, and he was invited to exhibit in Moscow, Berlin, and Vienna.

Perhaps he should have moved there. But instead, he sat about for ten years wondering why these backwards yahoos wouldn't get with the times.

Slowing Down

Architecture didn't reward Mackintosh, if he rewarded it, and the end of his career sees more done by him in watercolor than blueprint.

• 1914: He moves to Suffolk with his wife, to paint--her original medium.
• 1916: 78 Derngate in Northampton is more or less his last architectural effort--summing up everything he knew and loved about the art. There were a few smaller commissions as well in the city, but CRM by this time had pretty much lost interest--and faith--in contemporary sensibilities.
• 1923: The pair take up residence in Port Vendres, France, and essentially stay out of everyone's way. He produces his best paintings at this time, though he'll never be known for them.
• 1927: On to London, likely the last place this man should want to go. And appropriately, the last place he did go. He died the following year of cancer.

What We Make of Him Now

He was the most memorable Scottish architect of his age, beyond doubt, and in recent years the nation has come to embrace him as a Fountainhead of architectural art nouveau and European Modernism. His unwillingness to compromise in the 'total design' of a house has since earned him acclaim where it once made him undesirable, and now you can hardly walk into a gift shop in Britain without encountering one of his trademark designs, fashioned into some trinket or other: the Mackintosh font, and the Mackintosh rose.

Another visionary dies penniless while the world plays catch-up.