Charles Rennie Mackintosh

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, and trai­ned at the Glas­gow School of Art, Mack­in­tosh re­jec­ted over­de­co­ra­ted Vic­to­rian sty­les in favor of a spare sim­pli­city that fea­tured geo­metric shapes and un­ador­ned sur­faces. 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 un­or­na­men­ted 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 was also an im­portant in­te­rior de­si­gner, and from 1897 to 1912 he crea­ted the de­sign scheme for the Crans­ton chain of tearooms in Glas­gow. 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.