Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Tapa dura

Architect, interior designer, furniture designer, painter, and graphic artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a modern Renaissance man. This far-ranging book by the leading scholars in the field offers new information and ideas about many aspects of Mackintosh's work: his famous tea rooms, his distinctive furniture, and his evocative paintings. In addition, individual chapters are devoted to his two most remarkable surviving buildings, Glasgow School of Art and The Hill Houseboth illustrated with specially commissioned color photographs. The authors also provide a fresh and thoughtful look at Mackintosh's context in turn-of-the-century Glasgow and London while revising many of the myths that have long obscured his life and career. His extensive collaboration with his wife, Margaret Macdonald, and his working relationships with his mentors and patrons receive enlightening scrutiny as well. This authoritative volume - which accompanies a major retrospective with an international tour, organized by the Glasgow Museums - also contains an extensive chronology, a cast of characters, a selected bibliography, and an appendix of the Mackintosh buildings and interiors that are still in existence.

Wendy Kaplan is Department Head and Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.