dolls house source information about charles rennie macintosh life and architecture

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born into a large family of eleven children in the Townhead area of Glasgow. He has become one of the most prolific Scottish architects of the twentieth century. Macintosh designed buildings can still be found in Glasgow along with collections of furniture and accessories.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was influenced by Scottish tradition and Art Nouveau. He blended the two with Japanese forms to produce the highly distinctive Macintosh style. He also worked with other artists and designers known as “The Four.” Between them they created the “Glasgow Style.” Macintosh style is synonymous with a high level of detail, shape and simplicity.

At school, Rennie Macintosh had considerable difficulty with literacy, (it is now thought that he was dyslexic.) After a limp deemed him unable to perform manual labour, Macintosh gained an apprentice’s position at John Hutchison’s architectural firm. After working at the architects, Macintosh attended the Glasgow School Of Art in his evenings. He was a talented scholar, winning a prize from the School of Art for his design for a terrace house.

By 1890 Macintosh was working for Honeyman & Keppie. During his time with Honeyman & Keppie, Macintosh designed many of the buildings for which he is known today. Glasgow School of Art, Hill House and Scotland Street School still survive today. However, Macintosh projects were rarely profitable. By 1910, commissions at Honeyman & Keppie were drying up and Macintosh was wrestling with a drinking problem. In 1913, Macintosh and his wife, Margaret, left Glasgow for Walberswick in Suffolk. Locals found it difficult to take to the Macintosh’s with their strange accents, bohemian dress sense and artistic lifestyles. After being suspected of being spies in 1915, their house was broken into on orders from the Foreign Office.

In 1915, they moved to Chelsea. Rennie Macintosh struggled to make a living as a designer. The war was ending and commissions and resources were scarce. Nothing that he designed was built. Although both Macintosh and Margaret turned to textile design to make a living this was still not successful. Macintosh turned to his friends in Scotland asking them to buy his watercolours to enable him to meet his rent payments.

In 1923, Macintosh and Margaret moved to the south of France. The climate and cheaper standard of living suited them much better and Macintosh turned his hand to watercolours and planned an exhibition in London. He was a slow painter and only completed around forty watercolours. Macintosh never exhibited.

In 1928, at the age of 60, Charles Rennie Mackintosh died in London He was sixty years old and was suffering from throat and tongue cancer. He died relatively poor, was possible alcoholic and his achievements were not recognized by his country. The valuer of Rennie Macintosh’s estate valued four of his chairs as “practically valueless.” In 2002, one of these chairs raised over £150,000 at auction