Quick Design History: The Glasgow School #ThrowbackThursday

If you’ve ever visited Glasgow you would have seen some of the work of this talented group of creatives dotted around the city. The most prominent of these is the Glasgow School of Art designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the members of the group.

Apart from architect Mackintosh, the group also included painter and glass artist Margaret McDonald, her sister, artist Frances McDonald and architect Herbert MacNair.

Working in Glasgow at the turn of the 20th Century the four were, like a lot of artists of the time, endeavouring to move towards what they defined as a more ‘Modern’ style. Something that felt part of the the modern world rather than harking back to older styles and traditions that dominated a lot of art up until this point.

This ‘Modern’ style shows an interesting transition from the really organic stylings of Art Nouveau and a move towards a more geometric style with panels of flat colour.

Posters such as that for the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts (1895) and the Scottish Musical Review (1896) are some of my favourites. Featuring towering geometric representations of the human figure that flow beautifully into bold capitalised type with decorative nods towards the illustrations.

As with other creatives of the time, the members of the group didn’t confine themselves to one area, but instead moved between design, architecture & interior design, furniture design and painting, metalwork and textiles. But all with a strong adherence to what became know as the Glasgow Style.

Wandering through the Glasgow School of Art you get to glimpse the extent they would work their vision into every aspect of a project. Its almost freaky.

What’s really sad is while writing this piece I found out half the school burnt down in 2014 including beautiful spaces like the Mackintosh library. Hopefully the restoration does justice to the work of this talented group of artists.

Visit us next Thursday for another design history #tbt!