"Shake of all the props - the props tradition and authority offer you - and go alone - crawl - stumble - stagger - but go alone", encouraged the Scottish architect, designer and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh his audience during his 1902 lecture Seemliness.1 How Charles Rennie Mackintosh himself attempted to do just that can be explored in the exhibition Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Making the Glasgow Style. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Making the Glasgow Style @ Kelvingrove Art Gallery and
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Arguably because Passover/Easter is early this year, every, but every, museum is opening a major exhibition in the course of March 2018, in preparation for the unofficial start of the tourist season in April. A situation which leaves us with the daunting possibility of creating 5 such Top 5 lists. And still having some exhibitions left over. Faced with a similar situation back in November 2017 we referred to the abundance of options which lay before us as being akin to "gardens mottled with
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One of the most mundane, yet important, aspects of any designer or architect's training is sketching existing buildings and products. Observing. Studying. Forming. Learning. Developing. Hans J Wegner, for example, drew, drew and redrew the furniture in the Danish Design Museum Copenhagen, Louis I. Kahn spent his formative years sketching the ruins of European churches and cathedrals, while a young Le Corbusier regularly crossed the Swiss-Italian Border to undertake study tours of locations
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144th birthdays aren't occasions all celebrate; however, because Charles Rennie Mackintosh ties in so nicely with so many of the themes we've covered in the past weeks it seems like an occasion we can't ignore. Born in Glasgow on June 7th 1868 Charles Rennie Mackintosh trained as an architect with John Hutchinson before moving to the larger company Honeyman & Keppie following his qualification in 1889. In 1890 Mackintosh was given his first solo project, designing an extension for the back
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Italian design is, if we all close our eyes for a minute or two and be brutally honest, a lot like English football or French cooking - it's continued association with a particular quality and geniality is largely due to the number of non-Italians(English/French) who have continually contributed to the tradition and so kept it modern, kept it fresh and kept it exciting. Danish design is Danish because only Danes are allowed to do it - Italian design is universal because any one can do it:
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