Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Details

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

A rare low ebonized ladder-back armchair, 1917
designed for the Dug-Out, at Miss Cranston's Willow Tea Rooms, the back with eight gently bowed and horizontal splats flanked by turned uprights, with shaped arm supports, rectangular upholstered drop-in seat, on square section legs joined by six stretchers

Provenance

The Willow Tea Rooms, Grosvenor Restaurant, Glasgow

Literature

(1) Billcliffe, pl.1917.36; p.237.35, comparable smaller example designed for the Dug-Out and comparable to that designed for W.J. Bassett-Lowke Esq, 78 Derngate; pl.1917.24, preliminary sketch; Toronto, 1978, p.33, illustrated; (2) Billcliffe, p.209

Exhibited

Toronto, 1967, no.33; Toronto, 1978, no.116, Washington, 1985, no.45

Lot Essay

Much of the furniture designed for the Dug-Out echoes the new shapes which Mackintosh had devised for W.J. Bassett-Lowke at 78 Derngate, Northampton in 1915-16. Mackintosh designed several ladderback chairs in his career and this is one of the most elegant and sophisticated. Only one other example is known to survive (Glasgow School of Art).

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