Mackintosh day in Glasgow

Friday, May 11

We were Mackintosh maniacs today!

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and his wife Margaret Macdonald weren’t massive successes during their lives, but they’re just about revered today. (Actually, he’s much more famous, but they were a team.)

We spent the day at two museums that hold a very good representation of the couples’ work.

One, the Kelvingrove Museum, had a very large exhibit to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. They had tons of things, from his very early architectural drawings from his days at the Glasgow School of Art, to some of his late watercolors.

Lovely door trim

We really took our time, crisscrossing the exhibit as different rooms emptied of the mostly German and Scottish visitors.

I like a lot of Mackintosh’s work, so I was super happy to be there. But I was most taken with a large screen that Margaret made for a tearoom in the early 20th century. Every artist needs a patron, and the Mackintoshs had one in a woman who started to open tearooms, a new thing at the time, across Glasgow.

This panel was about fifteen feet wide and maybe ten feet tall. It was hung at eye-level, but one would have had to look up at it in the tearoom. So we saw it even better than people would have been able to at the time. I can’t really say why I liked it, but I sat on a bench in front of it and stared until Carolyn poked me and told me to move along <s>.

After buying a few trinkets in the gift shop, that probably nets the museum more than the couple ever earned from their creations, we went out to the main hall of the museum to listen to a few minutes of their daily organ concert. It was slightly cheesy, which made me love it. Just a guy playing a massive organ on the balcony, but it was cool.

This is the main hall of the museum - the organ is on the upper level

After that, we crossed the street to have a delightful lunch and some craft beer at Brewdog. Nice, friendly guys served us both good beer and tasty food. I had a super healthy salad for some reason, and Carolyn got a burger, asking them to hold the bacon and the barbecue sauce from their simplest offering. The most complex was cheddar cheese, pickled onions, black pudding, blue cheese and barbecue sauce. What the holy fuck?!?

After that, we took advantage of the weak sun to walk through the Kelvingrove Park. Lots of flowering trees and rhododendron, all bursting with color. It’s cool to see rhododendron varieties that we don’t get at home.

Then we hit the Hunterian Art Gallery, where they’ve recreated the home that the Mackintoshs lived in fairly early in their marriage. 

We did a small detour to the University of Glasgow to hit the gift shop and get a couple of T-shirts. It was just across the street from the Hunterian (that houses the Mackintosh house re-creation).

Front of the University of Glasgow

I’m not sure how long it took to accomplish this feat, but they did a bang-up job! The entryway, dining room, bedroom and work space were pretty faithful recreations. They also had a guest bedroom that Rennie had created for a client in England which was also cool.

This is from the outside of the building - inside this was the front door to the recreated house

Living room - when we saw it there was furniture

There were just a few other people viewing the home, so we could poke around at our leisure. We would have purchased just about every piece there save for the bed, which was made for smaller people who weren’t obsessed with comfort <s>. Of course, if we lived at the time, we either would have thought it was too modern, or wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

We’d started the day on the hop on/hop off bus, so we caught the bus back home, seeing many of the sights of Glasgow on the way, including one of the few realized Mackintosh buildings, the former home of a local newspaper.

We were too tired to cook, and too lazy to look for a restaurant, so we did our usual—bought pre-made meals from Marks and Spencer. I’m not usually a pre-made kind of girl, but they manage to whip up some very tasty, spicy things, easily heated in the microwave.

We didn't opt for dessert, but if we had, we could be snacking on these shortbreads right now. They come in commemorative tins - cute!

Now we’re watching BBC 4, our favorite channel. Actually, Carolyn’s just about asleep, so she’s going to have to rally to add some photos before we post this. If there are photos attached, she answered the call!

SXM and CDN