Glasgow for Art Lovers

A few years ago I made a brief stopover here in the dead of winter. It was a dark, dreary evening when I arrived, and I had only one hour between checking into my hotel and meeting friends for dinner. But there was someplace I had to go. I had recently discovered Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the renowned Scottish architect and designer, and I wanted to see his most famous building.

Mackintosh, born here in 1868, was considered well ahead of his time. He developed a singular style, blending elements of Scottish baronial vernacular, the Arts and Crafts movement, Japanese influences, Art Nouveau and an originality that caused some critics to consider him the harbinger of Modernism. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, his contemporary, he designed not only buildings, but the total environment that went into them, from furniture to lighting fixtures to wall coverings.

Mackintosh’s masterpiece is considered to be the Glasgow School of Art, and it was a healthy hike away from my hotel. But I worried I’d never again have the chance to visit Glasgow, so I seized the moment.

Collar turned up against the cold, I rushed out of my hotel, past the office workers and shoppers scurrying home down Sauchiehall Street, one of Glasgow’s main thoroughfares. Then I climbed the steep hilly rise to Renfrew Street, to the art school’s entrance, and stood silent in awe.

No book, no photograph or commentary, had prepared me for the reality. Monumental yet approachable, massive yet human, the solid stone edifice was pierced with grand studio windows and graced with a network of wrought iron railings. In lesser hands, such geometry and economy of line might prove cold and severe. In Mackintosh’s grasp, however, the effect was harmonious and serene.

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This past spring, I was lucky enough to be able to return to Glasgow after seeing a comprehensive--and very popular--Mackintosh exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit has since traveled to Chicago, and will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Aug. 3. The retrospective--sketches and blueprints, photographs and models, examples of the designer’s furnishings and a reconstruction of an entire tearoom--whet my appetite to see more of the real thing at its source.

And so in May I found myself standing once again at the entrance to the Glasgow School of Art. This time, though, the skies were blue, the weather unseasonably balmy, and the school open and alive with students rushing between classes, sketchbooks clutched under their arms.

“We’re not a museum, but we’ve inherited a museum,” explained Peter Trowles in an interview from his basement office. Trowles heads the American Friends of the Glasgow School of Art, a group that seeks funds to preserve the building and nurture the Mackintoshes of the future.

As I joined a tour group led by a student, we squeezed past canvasses stacked up in the halls, sniffed acrid fumes of oil paint, and tried to keep out of the students’ way. We learned that when the building was completed in 1909, some Glaswegians scoffed at the expanses of paned glass Mackintosh had introduced to let in as much light as possible, a special challenge in what was then a gritty industrial city. “Looks like a greenhouse,” one detractor purportedly sniffed.

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Some of the art school’s interior will remind Southern Californians of both Frank Lloyd Wright’s work and the Arts and Crafts bungalows of Greene and Greene. The building’s entrance features an expansive central staircase, and we toured hallways and rooms filled with dark furniture designed by Mackintosh and his wife and collaborator, Margaret. Everywhere you see Mackintosh’s signature grid patterns--in window panes, stair railings, chair backs, Japanese-style hanging-lantern lamps in the school’s library, stained glass panels, clocks, table legs.

Besides the Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh was receiving a number of major architectural and interior design commissions in Scotland around the turn of the century. But Mackintosh’s “moment” eventually passed, and the upcoming LACMA exhibit also charts his demise. In addition to his signature high-back chairs, leaded glass panels, stenciled wall decorations and a re-creation of a tearoom, there will be examples of the watercolor landscapes he painted after commissions eluded him and he and Margaret moved to the south of France.

The streets of Glasgow provide their own poignant testimony to the designer’s faded glory. The presses have long been silenced in the Glasgow Herald Building (with its delicate wrought iron ornamentation), and the Daily Record Building (with its fanciful tile work), both of which Mackintosh had a hand in designing. Passersby hurry past, seemingly oblivious to their historical and architectural significance.

On the other hand, as the touring American exhibit prompts a new awareness of and interest in Mackintosh, homages to Glasgow’s native son have been enjoying increased attendance. At the Hill House, in the suburb of Helensburgh, what was once a private home has been restored by the National Trust for Scotland, and visitors are making the hour trek from Glasgow in droves.

Up to 40,000 people a year now visit the Hill House to stroll the green, graceful grounds and tour the rooms that reflect Mackintosh’s commitment to unity of design. Every fixture is designed to complement the whole, and no detail is too small: In the drawing room, the pink roses stenciled in a frieze around the walls are echoed in the leaded lanterns, windows and rose-colored squares in the carpets.

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Closer to Glasgow (a 10-minute taxi drive from the city center), the recently opened House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, is a new construction based on a home design Mackintosh entered in a magazine competition. Though praised for its inventiveness, it didn’t win and was never built.

“You could move in tomorrow,” I overheard one visitor remarking as we inspected rooms reproduced from Mackintosh’s original designs. The entryway opens immediately onto the Music Room, a dazzling, all-white enclave filled with French doors and sunlight, at least on this day. All the designer’s trademarks are on view, piece-by-piece: the high-backed chairs, the metal lanterns and a spectacular white piano Elton John would covet. Mackintosh dubbed this airy place his “feminine” room. As with his other commissions, he balanced it with a “masculine” side, the somber dining room that is all dark wood inlaid with gesso panels designed by his wife.

There are 16 Mackintosh sites in and around Glasgow, outlined in brochures available at the sites or from the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, headquartered in Queen’s Cross Church (although it’s the only Mackintosh-designed church, it’s in a bit of a dicey neighborhood). One of the best places to see Mackintosh’s work is at the Hunterian Art Gallery, which contains reconstructions of rooms using furniture from the architect’s own home, including an all-white drawing room.

Many visitors stop to see the Willow Tea Monumental yet approachable, massive yet human, the solid stone edifice of the Glasgow School of Arts was pierced with grand studio windows and graced with a network of wrought iron railings.

Rooms, a functioning tea salon on the second floor of Henderson Jewellers on busy Sauchiehall Street. The furnishings are reproductions, somewhat garishly executed, and the effect is, frankly, not too dissimilar from that of the McDonald’s down the street with its pseudo-Mackintosh interior. Unfortunately, when I turned up at 4 p.m. for a pot of Earl Grey, the Willow was in the process of closing for the day.

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The disappointment of the tearoom was assuaged on another day of my four-day tour of Mackintosh’s Glasgow when I asked a taxi driver to drive me to the Scotland Street School. There was model of it--all deep red sandstone pierced with glass, with two mammoth towers on either end--when I attended the Met exhibit in New York, and it seemed worth a detour.

As the taxi navigated past vacant lots and factories and car parks and highway overpasses on Glasgow’s outskirts, I began to question my decision. But when it deposited me in front of the school, the debris and urban decay suddenly disappeared from view.

Before me was the work of a confident, imaginative and enlightened mind. Mackintosh had thought of everything and executed his ideas with consummate grace. The towers are a reminder of Scotland’s historic nobility, set against the backdrop of Glasgow’s modern industrial blight. To the students who once marched up and down the towers’ interior staircases and peered out, the leaded glass windows must have provided a welcome dose of light and a refreshing view of what were then grassy fields outside.

Once again I was filled with admiration, standing silent and in awe like that first night in Glasgow.

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GUIDEBOOK

Mackintosh’s Scotland

Getting there: There is connecting service (involving a change of planes) to Glasgow from LAX on British Air, American and Air Canada. Current advance-purchase round-trip fares start at $1,096.

Where to stay: The Malmaison (278 W. George St.; telephone 011-44-141-221-6400, fax 011-44-141-221-6411), is ultra-stylish; a standard double room is about $150. One Devonshire Gardens (tel. 011-44-141-339-2001, fax 011-44-141-337-1663) caters to a swanky clientele; double rooms about $233. A more affordable option is the Rennie Mackintosh Hotel (218/220 Renfrew St.; tel. 011-44-141-333-9992, fax 011-44-141-333-9995), a modest B&B; with design nods to the Mackintosh style; a double is about $75 (includes breakfast).

Mackintosh sites: Glasgow School of Art (167 Renfrew St., local tel. 353-4526); guided tours (reservations required) given Monday through Saturday; admission about $6. The Hill House (Upper Colquhoun St., Helensburgh; tel. 01436-673900, 23 miles from Glasgow); open late March through October; admission $7.50. House for an Art Lover (Bellahouston Park, tel. 353-4449); open daily, admission $6. Hunterian Art Gallery (University of Glasgow, tel. 330-5431); open Monday through Saturday, admission free. Willow Tea Rooms (217 Sauchiehall St., tel. 331-2569); open Monday through Saturday. Scotland Street School (225 Scotland St., tel. 429-1202); open seven days, admission free. Queen’s Cross Church/Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society headquarters (870 Garscube Road, tel. 946-6600); open Sunday through Friday.

For more information: British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York, NY 10176-0799; tel. (800) 462-2748 or (212) 986-2200, fax (212) 986-1188; or the Greater Glasgow Tourist Board, 11 George Square; local tel. 204-4400.