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Wednesday 12 June 2013

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Last month the Waverley Art Quilters studied Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).

He was an architect who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but he is also known for his furniture design, particularly chairs.
Mackintosh was commissioned to design the new Glasgow School of Art and as well as being the architect he designed the entire interior including the furniture and stained glass windows.

He met his wife Margaret MacDonald at the Glasgow School of Art and together with her sister Francis MacDonald and her husband Herbert MacNair; they began to exhibit together and were known as The Four.

Mackintosh admired the Japanese  style of clear simple lines and although known as an Art Nouveau designer, I think that he was ahead of his time as he designed with restraint (similar to the yet undiscovered Art Deco style).

He died in London of throat and tongue cancer when he was 60 years old.

He was well known for his rose design and I found my quilt quite easy to make up for a change. I fused some narrow black stripes on the side and free hand drew a rose and a couple of stems with leaves.

Mackintosh © 2013 Linda Steele



I zig zagged around the edges of the rose to give it some definition and I was going to do the stems in green when I thought that it might give a more stained glass look if I did it in black. I think that it looks better that way.

Just by chance I had taken a photo of the quilt before I quilted it and it looks so flat. The quilting really does make the quilt. It is 12" x 16".

Mackintosh unquilted
Bye for now,
Linda

4 comments:

Michele Hill said...

Love, love your quilt Linda xx

Linda Steele said...

Thanks Michele, it was fun to make.

Anonymous said...

Love te quilt but more than that loved the story of Charles rennie machintosh as my maiden name was rennie and my dad name wa Charles.....wow....wonder if my grandma who was from Scotland named dad after this person......thanks for the story...

Linda Steele said...

Thanks for telling me your story, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was pretty famous, so he could have inspired the name, although it was probably popular at the time anyway!