Designer(s) of the Month: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald

Week 4: the Willow Tea Rooms

Merry Christmas! Before we begin today, I wanted to let you all know that I'm taking a little bit of a blogging break all next week to visit with family and relax a bit, so today is my last post until the new year. You can find me right back here on January 4th, and you'll see a new Designer of the Month on January 8th, but until then, have a very merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and I'll see you all in 2010!

Exterior sign for the Willow Tea Rooms. Courtesy of Undiscovered Scotland.

I wanted to end my month of Mackintosh and Macdonald with my favorite series of the couple's interiors: Miss Cranston's tea rooms, and in particular, the Willow Tea Rooms. But before we get to the designs themselves, it's important to look at who Miss Cranston was, as well as the the importance of the tea room during this time.

The Glasgow tea rooms of the late 19th century were a phenomena unique to the city, filling a particular gap in the market - the temperance movement was especially strong in Scotland, and department stores, hotels and catering establishments all addressed the needs of the leisured middle class - they offered a place for office workers and clerks to take light refreshment during the day and return to their desks still sober, in addition to providing a genteel environment for women to meet unchaperoned.[1] The first Glasgow tea room was opened in 1875 by Stuart Cranston, a tea dealer from a family of hotel keepers.[2] It was his sister and business rival, Catherine (Kate) Cranston, however, whose first tea room opened in 1878 at Argyle Street, and whose name would become synonymous for high-quality service and taste combined with an artistic sense of decor.[3]

Charles Rennie Mackintish, high-backed chair. For the Luncheon Room at the Argyle Street tea rooms, Glasgow 1898-9. Courtesy of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Miss Cranston would turn out to be Mackintosh's most influential supporter, hiring him to design a series of tea room interiors between the years of 1896-1917.[4] Mackintosh's first commission, in 1896, under the direction of designer George Walton, was to stencil murals for Miss Cranston's Buchanan Street tea room, in addition to creating furniture (such as the above chair) and light fittings for the expanded and redeveloped Argyle Street tea room.[5] Miss Cranston first hired George Walton, a designer credited for introducing Arts and Crafts ideals to Glasgow, to carry out the decorations for her tea rooms, but his and Mackintosh's relationship seems to have been so contentious that by 1900, Walton had left for London, giving Mackintosh sole control of Miss Cranston's projects.[6] In 1900, Mackintosh designed the ladies’ White Luncheon Room for Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street tea rooms, creating both furniture and decoration in the space, while Macdonald included one of my favorite of her gesso works in this room, The May Queen (see below).[7]

Margaret Macdonald, The May Queen, 1900, gesso panel. For the Ingram Street tea room, Glasgow. Courtesy of allposters.com.

Shortly after the work on the Ingram Street tea room, Mackintosh was asked to design the rooms and accompanying furniture for Miss Cranston's Willow Tea Rooms, creating what is arguably the most famous of all the tea room interiors, the Room de Luxe. As the Design Museum of London explains:

The Willow tea rooms occupied a narrow site on Sauchiehall Street – old Scots for ‘alley of willows’, hence the use of willow for many of the decorative motifs used. Nothing escaped Mackintosh’s attention. He and Margaret designed everything from furniture and menus, to the waitresses’ uniforms. Within the four storey building, Mackintosh created a ladies’ tea room on the ground floor, with a general lunch room at the back and a tea gallery above it. On the first floor was a more exclusive ladies’ room with a men’s billiard and smoking room on the floor above. The most extravagant of the rooms was the Room de Luxe on the first floor. Overlooking the street, it had white walls with a frieze of coloured glass, mirrored glass and decorative leading, a gesso panel by Margaret Macdonald, splendid double doors with further leaded glass decoration and silver painted high-backed chairs and sofas upholstered in rich purple.[8]

Photograph of the Room de Luxe, the Willow Tea Rooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, 1903. Courtesy of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Nothing like the Willow Tea Rooms had ever been seen in Glasgow before, and the opening in 1903 was accompanied by many people who came simply to admire the luxurious space.[9] As Elizabeth Wilhide describes the space in her essay about the Willow Tea Rooms, "The Room de Luxe on the first floor represents the most delicate and luxurious interior Mackintosh ever designed...The Room de Luxe must certainly rank as one of the most exquisitely artistic surroundings ever created for the refined ritual of taking tea."[10] To help explain this sense of opulence and refinement present in the Willow Tea Rooms, I've included a few images below of the interior, including such decorative elements as furniture, stained glass and art panels.

Willow Tea Rooms, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Photograph Copyright 2005 Dave Souza. Courtesy of archiseek.com.

Charles Rennie Mackintish, doors to the Room de Luxe. For the Willow Tea Rooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Glasgow Story.

Margaret Macdonald, O Ye that Walk in Willowwood, 1903, gesso panel. From the Room de Luxe, Willow Tea Rooms. Courtesy of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, lattice-back chair, 1904. For the Willow Tea Rooms. Courtesy of bonluxat.

After the Willow Tea Rooms, Mackintosh and Macdonald went on to do further work for Miss Cranston, including the menu card below by Margaret Macdonald, for Catherine Cranston's The White Cockade restaurant at the Glasgow International Exhibition, 1911.[11] After 1917, however, Miss Cranston lost interest in her tea-room empire when her husband, to whom she was devoted, died, but not before she had made her mark on the Glasgow tea-room business: "quite Kate Cranstonish" was the local term for anything refined, artistic and progressive.[12]

Margaret Macdonald, Menu card for Miss Cranston's 'White Cockade Restaurant,' 1911. Courtesy of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

So I hope you enjoyed December's Designer(s) of the Month. If you're interested in learning more about Mackintosh and Macdonald, I would highly recommend Elizabeth Wilhide's The Mackintosh Style: Design and Decor, for its lovely full-color and page images, in addition to its great writing, as well as David Brett's C. R. Mackintosh: The Poetics of Workmanship, for a look into the decorative elements of Mackintosh's designs, including a rare glimpse at many building and design details.


[1] Elizabeth Wilhide, "Mackintosh Interiors: Willow Tea Rooms," The Mackintosh Style: Design and Decor (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995), 106.

[2] Ibid., 108.

[3] Ibid., 108.

[4] Charles Rennie Macintosh Society online, "Charles Rennie Mackintosh," http://www.crmsociety.com/crmackintosh.aspx (accessed December 22, 2009).

[5] Elizabeth Wilhide, "Mackintosh Interiors: Willow Tea Rooms," The Mackintosh Style: Design and Decor (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995), 108.

[6] Ibid., 108.

[7] Ibid., 108.

[8] Design Museum online, "Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Architect + Furniture Designer (1868-1928)," http://designmuseum.org/design/charles-rennie-mackintosh (accessed December 22, 2009).

[9] Elizabeth Wilhide, "Mackintosh Interiors: Willow Tea Rooms," The Mackintosh Style: Design and Decor (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995), 111.

[10] Ibid., 114.

[11] The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery online, "GLAHA 41845: Menu card for Miss Cranston's 'White Cockade Restaurant' 1911 (commercial printing)", http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch_Mackintosh/DetailedResults.fwx?SearchTerm=41845&reqMethod=Link&browseMode=on (accessed on December 22, 2009).

[12] Elizabeth Wilhide, "Mackintosh Interiors: Willow Tea Rooms," The Mackintosh Style: Design and Decor (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995), 110.