Stairs to the gallery, Willow Tea Rooms
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
1903-4
217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
Other Views and Related Material
Photograph and text by Jacqueline Banerjee
The first floor of the tea rooms was restored in 1980, its gallery showing off "tapered columns, a lattice ceiling, and balustrades all in timber painted white with, here and there, tiny areas of mauve" (Williamson et al. 241). Copies were made of the original doors into the Salon, which had long pewter finger-plates, and insets of opaque and tinted glass in hand-crafted metal-work: see offsite here. Although the Salon de Luxe with its frieze of mirrors and stained glass, and other decorative features, was planned as the "spiritual heart" of the tea rooms (Fiell 118), today it is perhaps more enjoyable to sit in the wonderfully bright and airy gallery. "The Mackintoshes had created a chic interior that was startlingly novel, easy to appreciate, and open to the public. They could not have advertised themselves, or Miss Cranston, better" (Crawford 114).
References
Crawford, Alan. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. London: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
Fiell, Charlotte & Peter. Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928). Cologne: Taschen, 1995.
Williamson, Elizabeth, et al. Glasgow. Buildings of Scotland series. London: Penguin, 1990.
Last modified 27 October 2009