CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868-1928)
PAIR OF DINING CHAIRS, CIRCA 1911
£18,750
Auction: Day Two: 22 April 2021 | From 11:00
Description
stained oak, with drop-in seats upholstered in horsehair fabric
Dimensions
46.6cm wide, 101cm high, 45cm deep
Footnote
Provenance:
William Douglas Esq., Glasgow
Benno Schotz Esq., Glasgow
Jack Coia Esq., Glasgow and by descent
Literature: Billcliffe, Roger Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings and Interior Designs, Moffatt 2009, p. 213, see footnote to no. 1910.12.25
Cotton, Bernard D. Scottish Vernacular Furniture London 2008, pp. 172-177, plates 296-298
For the third pair in this set see Lyon & Turnbull auction Decorative Arts: Design since 1860, 25th March 2015, Lot 291
Note: By 1910 Charles Rennie Mackintosh was in the last phase of creativity as an architect and designer in Glasgow. He had completed the second phase of the Glasgow School of Art the previous year, perhaps his greatest work. Further furniture orders were commissioned and delivered to the School in 1910. Other work included designs for the temporary White Cockade tearoom at the Glasgow Exhibition and redesigns of furniture and interior decorations for The Chinese Room and a new room, The Cloister Room, both for Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tearooms.
At the same time, he worked on a series of furniture designs for his friend, the decorator William Douglas, who worked from premises in West George Street. Douglas was employed on various projects by Mackintosh including Hous'hill, Miss Cranston's home, in 1904. Amongst the furniture designed for Douglas was a set of six oak dining chairs, of which two pairs are offered here.
The chairs are oak, stained dark and designed in the ‘brander’ back style, so-called in Scotland because of their backs' resemblance to the brander iron or gridiron used over the fire to cook meat or to toast oatcakes. The origins of the brander back date to the late 18th century or earlier. The simple concept of vertical back slats was used on chairs in one interpretation or another for all levels of society throughout Scotland until the second half of the 19th century when it fell out of fashion.
In common with, for example, his interpretations of ladder back chairs in various manifestations, Mackintosh has designed his own version of this vernacular chair. The back, typically squat, has been elongated, and the number of slats doubled from a characteristic four to eight. He has further accentuated the vertical character of the chair by omitting the cross-stretchers, normally found to the front and rear.