Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Alivar

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (Scotland, 1868–1928) for Alivar.
Pair of “Ingram” chairs, c. 1980.
Stained wood and later-period upholstery.
Measurements: 151 x 47 x 43 cm (x2).
Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for the Ladies’ Luncheon Room at Miss Catherine Cranston’s tea rooms on Ingram Street in Glasgow, this chair is a magnificent example of the holistic approach to space developed by the Scottish architect. The 1900 project marked a new collaboration between Mackintosh and Cranston, for whom he designed not only the furniture but also the décor and the layout of the interiors. Its most striking feature is the extraordinarily tall backrest, conceived as a true architectural extension of the space. A version of the chair is preserved at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, while specimens and original documentation are part of the archives of The Glasgow School of Art. The Design Museum in London also includes it among the representative pieces of early 20th-century furniture design.
Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, and watercolorist who played a pivotal role in the Arts & Crafts movement and was also the leading exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He decided to pursue architecture at the age of just sixteen, and throughout his life he devoted himself to transforming the buildings, furniture, and art of Glasgow. Virtually all of his furniture designs were created by Mackintosh for the tea rooms he decorated, the most famous of which was the Willow Tea Room. He rose to fame after exhibiting his pieces at the 1900 Vienna Secession exhibition. In fact, his style was one of the most prominent examples of geometric Modernism, a movement also embraced by the Viennese. Thus, he developed a body of work characterized by decorative restraint and straight lines. He shares with organic Modernism the pursuit of asymmetry and inspiration from the plant world, but his interpretation is radically different. Most of his work is housed at the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow, as well as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Design Museum, the Tate Gallery, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among others.