100 Works Of Art I Like # Post 3
Title: Willow TeaRooms
Artist: Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Date: Opened at October 1903
Some History Background: The Willow Tearooms are at tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall street, Glasgow, Scotland. The building as well as the interior design and most of the furniture in the rooms were designed by the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.The building has three interlinked tea rooms at the ground floor, a first floor gallery and from there steps that lead up to a further half storey to the famous "Room Deluxe." The rooms were also decorated with works by Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, who worked closely with her husband at the creation fo this room. Actually the gesso panel "O ye, all ye that walk in Willowood" that I talked about in my first post was originally part of the decoration of the Room DeLuxe, that is one of the most most extravagant of the rooms that Mackintosh created, and proved to be the tearooms' main attraction. The tearooms were owned by Catherine Cranston, a leading fugure in the development of the social phenomenon of tea rooms and one of the most important patron of Mackintosh. The tearooms had started becoming widely popular in the UK when she connceived the idea of a series of "art tearooms", venues where people could meet to relax and enjoy non-alcoholic refreshments in a variety of different "rooms" within the same building.
Unfortunately I have not studied enough of architecture to fully be able to admire and respect the design of the building but when I went to see the tearooms (or maybe when I just first saw them in a class power point slide) I was immediately amazed by the furniture of the room Deluxe. I don't know about you guys but I would never guess that these chairs were created a century ago... they seemed too modern in my mind but they are... and they are very beautiful, even more if you see them in reality. I didn't stay to drink tea or eat breakfast (but I will someday!) but the room, even now that the major art works that decorated it are not there anymore. It is also important to note that room went under some restorations as it changed owners but generally all tried to keep the basic idea of Mackintosh and recreated many of the furniture he designed.
I can;t say much about the rooms without going into history or more technical points (and I feel that I am not qualified enough yet to talks about the technique) so I will end the entry with a quote from Mackintosh:
"(The artist) must posses technical invention in order to create for himself suitable processes of expression - and above all he requires the aid of invention in order to transform the elements with which nature supplies him - and compose new images from them."
and more images from the building:
(The Room Deluxe as it is now)
(The doors of the building)
(Image of the front of the building)
(A willow tearooms cup)
I really think that anyone that enjoys cafes would certainly find this one very interesting. It may not be the comfortable type of cafe that you feel you can sit for hours because it is a bit formal in its decoration style but it is extremely pretty and you just want to go in and sit because it is so beautiful.
Note: I also found that the inspiration for the themes and the name of the tearooms comes from the name of the street it was created at, Sauchiehall. "Sauchiehall" is derived from "sauch" the Scots word for a willow tree and "haugh", which means meadow. This was the starting point for Mackintosh and MacDonald's ideas for the design theme.