Today a guest blog entry from Elizabeth Whiteley:

 

If you find yourself in the Baltimore area, check out the current exhibit at the Walters Gallery. Titled “Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style” it’s a large show with works by the famed Scottish architect and other designers such as Christopher Dresser, Jessie M. King, Margaret Macdonald, and Talwin Morris. It will be on display until January 5, 2020.

The wall note for this textile design, ‘Wave Pattern in Purple, Pink, Orange, and Black’, ca. 1915-23, says “Mackintosh’s precise use of contrast and symmetry here created a brilliant optical illusion. He aligned the white, purple, and orange loops vertically against the penciled grid, but the wavy arcs of pink and black create strong diagonals that pull the eye away from the underlying structure of the pattern.”

This drawing is a lampshade design for the standard lamp, The Hill House, 1905. It shows an effective way to use bilateral symmetry on a lozenge shape.

The wall note for this chair (1904-5) says, “This chair, which Mackintosh designed for his own home, is a slightly taller version of one he first created to accompany a writing desk for The Hill House. At first glance, the chair seems rigidly angular, especially with the two columns of squares, yet Mackintosh always offset such severe geometries with a subtle softer curving line—here seen in the tall, gently concave back.

Elizabeth Whiteley