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Scotland: Exploring Mackintosh’s Glasgow

Glasgow School of Artby John Thomson

George Street, Central GlasgowI’m in Glasgow visiting relatives, recalled to the city by blood ties and circumstance. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, a little shabby in parts I must admit, its once busy dockyards replaced by a shopping mall, an amusement centre and a transportation museum. Thankfully, many of Glasgow’s magnificent sandstone buildings remain intact, a reminder of its better days when the city was flush with pride and Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh was at the top of his game. The Mackintosh story, like the city itself, is a bittersweet tale of success, decline and ultimate redemption. Not familiar with the name? You’ll recognize his furniture. His straight, high-backed chairs are cultural icons often associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement and although I’m not a fan of his chairs – too rigid for me – I have to acknowledge their importance.

Buchanan Street, central GlasgowI start my Glasgow tour on Sauchiehall (pronounced Sock-ee-hall) Street and work my way west. Glasgow converted its two main downtown thoroughfares, Buchanan and Sauchiehall Streets into pedestrian malls years ago and getting around the central core is a pedestrian’s dream. A gentle rain sprinkles the pavement but as soon as it starts, it stops. I’m barely wet. I climb Scott Street to the Glasgow School of Art considered the pinnacle of Mackintosh’s architectural career. Completed in 1909, it’s an imposing structure with a domineering command of its surroundings. It reminds me of a fortress. The western wall is tight and dense with narrow loopholes from which I imagine the inhabitants, if they were medieval archers, could shoot arrows if the city were under siege. The northern wall on the other hand has lots of large windows giving it an airy feel and letting in lots of light too. After all, this is an art school. Form follows function.

I saunter inside. “Where dae ye think yer goin’?” yells the security guard. This is functioning workspace and I didn’t see the sign that says tourists must report to the front office for an escorted tour. My bad. I did manage to steal some furtive glances, though, during my brief and illegal visit. I see that Mackintosh designed the School’s interiors as well, repeating his favourite themes, squares and rectangles in the light fixtures and wall decorations. His wife Margaret, an artist in her own right, contributed Art Nouveau floral tiles. (A major fire closed interior tours shortly after I left Scotland but the building can still be seen from the street while it’s being rebuilt).

Glasgow School of Art, northern facadeMackintosh was not only an architect but a designer too and the original Willow Tea Room on Sauchiehall is a prime example of his handiwork. Recruited by local businesswoman and teetotaller Catherine Cranston in 1896 to dress up her establishments, Mack designed everything – tables, chairs, room dividers, wall decorations, napkins and cutlery. The Tea Room, one of two in the city, has been preserved as a Mackintosh museum with the original stained glass door and replica furniture and yes, they still serve tea. Angularity is the prevailing theme – there are those high backed chairs again – and everything conforms to Mackintosh’s singular, unifying concept.

I jump on the subway, the third oldest in the world I’m told after London and Budapest. The cars are tiny compared to North American stock. “Don’t call it the Tube,” my relatives told me. “You’re not in London and it will only tick off the locals.” Glasgow takes pride in differentiating itself from England. In Glasgow, the underground is not The Underground.

Glasgow School of Art, western facadeI get off at the Kelvinhall stop and walk to the Hunterian Art Gallery on the grounds of the University of Glasgow. Mack’s 1906 residence or at least parts of it – the hall, dining room, living room and the main bedroom – have been moved from their original location and reassembled here for public display. It’s breathtaking in its simplicity. Mackintosh and Margaret have designed everything themselves right down to the fireplace decorations. They even knocked down interior walls to create more space, a radical innovation at the turn of the nineteenth century. Sunlight bounces off the stark white walls accentuating the open plan. The angular motif that I first saw at the Willow Tea Room, lots of right angles and variations on the square, is repeated in the floor, the furniture and the wall decorations. Everything is co-ordinated. A bit too co-ordinated. I feel like I’m in a museum piece, which of course I am, and long for the remains of a half-eaten breakfast on the dining room table or a pile of dirty clothes at the foot of those oh-so-perfect matching beds. I wonder if Mack and his wife ever felt the same way. Probably not. I have to admit the duo were ahead of their time though. Their turn-of-the-century digs look like they belonged in the 1930’s.

My last visit takes me to the Lighthouse, a gallery and design incubator originally built for a local newspaper and now repurposed as Scotland’s National Centre for Architecture and Design. It’s here that I find the completion of the Mackintosh story. The entire third floor is devoted to his life and his works.

Entrance to the LighthouseI learn that young Mackintosh was quite the celebrity when he completed the Glasgow School of Art in 1909 but when he left his employers, Honeyman and Keppie, to strike out on his own, tastes changed and his business faltered. He and his wife Margaret retreated to London to concentrate on textile design. And when that didn’t pan out the couple eventually retired to southern France where Mackintosh renounced architecture entirely and spent the rest of his life painting watercolours.

Mackintosh returned to the UK in 1927 and died the following year of cancer. For awhile it looked like the world had forgotten the innovative Scot but in 1973 a local non-profit society was created to maintain his buildings and recognize his accomplishments. Thanks to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society many of his buildings were preserved and his reputation solidified.

Today he’s Glasgow’s favorite son and the city isn’t shy about promoting him. He’s been immortalized, idolized and commercialized. It’s impossible to leave Glasgow without hearing his name, his handiwork or for that matter, a Mackintosh souvenir. One can’t have too many coffee mugs.

Mackintosh chairAs I board the plane to return home, I ponder the Mackintosh phenomenon. Yes, his buildings are stunning. Built to withstand the Scottish climate, they’re solid, substantial structures in contrast to those flouncy neo-classical buildings in vogue at the time. Scholars have called the style Scottish Baronial, tying Mackintosh and his ideas to the Scottish Renaissance of the early twentieth century when there was a creative surge in Scottish arts and letters. Perhaps he deserves his fame because he stripped away superfluous decoration in favour of detail that complemented the building’s integrity, paving the way for Modernism. Perhaps it’s because he involved himself in total design – integrating architecture with wall treatments, light fixtures and furniture. Mack pre-dated future “starchitects” like Frank Gehry by decades. Perhaps it’s all of these things, a combination of accomplishments both historic and aesthetic.

I went to Glasgow to visit relatives, not to bone up on architecture but I’m glad I wandered down the Mackintosh trail. I arrived a novice, barely familiar with his work, and left a believer, a convert to the cult of Mackintosh. But I still don’t like those stiff-looking chairs.

If You Go:

All things Mackintosh can be found at www.glasgowmackintosh.com. The site lists Mackintosh buildings, attractions and events.

I stayed at the four-star Millennium Hotel opposite Glasgow Square in the centre of town.

You can log onto Visit Scotland for links to other accommodations as well.


Loch Lomond and Glengoyne Whisky Distillery Half Day Tour from Glasgow

Photo credits:

Glasgow School of Art #1 by John a s / CC BY-SA
All other photos by John Thomson:
Central Glasgow, George Street
Central Glasgow, Buchanan Street
Glasgow School of Art, northern facade
Glasgow School of Art, western facade
The Entrance to the Lighthouse
The iconic Mackintosh chair

About the author:
Scottish-born John Thomson comes from a news and current affairs background. He writes for print, online and broadcast. A stickler for detail, he says “Braveheart” is an historical travesty. His forebearers never painted themselves blue nor flashed their buttocks in battle though he concedes Mel Gibson looked good in tartan.

Tagged With: Glasgow attractions, Scotland travel Filed Under: UK Travel

Glasgow, Scotland: Rough, Tough and Mean?

Glasgow University

A Tree, The Bird, The Fish And The Bell: A Boy, A Church And A Cemetery

by Helen Moat

Think of Glasgow and what do you think of: the Glasgow kiss (a greeting with a head butt), alcohol-fueled street brawls, sectarian violence between Celtic and Rangers supporters and thick, threatening, indecipherable accents. You might think of a sprawling urban mess, notoriously dysfunctional high-rise flats, 70s concrete monstrosities and dark, forbidding sandstone Victorian tenement buildings and other utilities blackened by decades of pollution. Poverty.

You might think of bad, bad food: iron brew, a nuclear-orange sugar-fueled drink, the deep-fried Mars bars (surely an urban myth?), bloody black pudding, haggis consisting of the parts most butchers throw away, flat sausages, 90% fat and 10% meat, and sugar-packed cakes. Early death.

Alan Moat outside the cathedralLondon it isn’t – nor Edinburgh. There’s nothing twee, contrived, touristy or pretty-pretty about Glasgow. Glasgow is down-to-earth, has real character. It’s smart, gritty, witty, vibrant and alive. It’s the genuine article.

Glasgow has had its ups and downs. It’s easy to forget it was once called the ‘Empire’s second city,’ it was a thriving industrial city full of sea merchants, shipbuilders, tradesmen, entrepreneurs, inventors, ground-breaking scientists, artists and intellects.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the Necropolis in the Cathedral Quarter. I went there as a tourist and unwittingly returned my father-in-law to the place of his birth, finding myself touching a personal past. I had no idea. He lived in the shadows of the Cathedral and the atmospheric Victorian cemetery, a child of poverty among Glasgow’s great and good.

The cathedral area was Alan’s stamping ground. The gates of the Necropolis were kept locked, no doubt to keep young scallywags like him out. Hardly a deterrent, the street kids scaled the railings and crept in regardless, sometimes tearing their clothes on the railings. Once they dared each other to enter the cemetery after dark. They crept through Celtic crosses, obelisks, toppled urns, headless statues and mausoleums. They crept past writers (including the author of Wee Willie Winkie) and sculptors, rich industrialists, sea merchants and esteemed churchmen and a towering John Knox. Near the bottom, they saw a shadowy old woman attired in black. They glanced away and looked back again to find she was gone. The boys scarpered. My father-in-law, a man not usually given to flights of fancy, swears she was a ghost.

lamp and cathedral spireThe Necropolis lies on a hill overlooking the city. All of Glasgow stretched out before us: the Tennent’s brewery close by, isolated tenement blocks, smaller brick-built houses, concrete offices and wind turbines on the moors, far on the horizon. Alan pointed out the place where his tenement home had once stood, long gone now. It had survived an incendiary bomb during the war (His mother, an ARP warden, had hosed down the fire in the attic herself) only for the building to be later demolished.

Atop the hill, a Victorian high-rise city of the dead, Glasgow’s elite sought to outdo their neighbour: with the largest family vault, the highest monument, the best quality stone, the most detailed mason work, the grandest sculpture or the finest inscription.

Glasgow cathedral interiorThe gravestones are filled with story and history. I could have spent hours there uncovering lives like John Ronald Ker’s: accidentally drowned while shooting wildfowl from a small boat off Contyre of Ronaghan at the early age of 21 – of a generous and amiable disposition and endearing qualities which made him so agreeable a companion, so good and true a friend. (July 1868)

Making our way back down the hill, Alan showed us a wall with a 30 foot vertical drop. He and his pals had once skidded to an abrupt stop here as they had tried to out-run a police officer. The policeman caught up with the ragamuffins and apprehended them, taking delight in reading out every detail of graveyard vandalism over the entire week, although the boys’ singular crime had been ‘breaking and entering’.

We slipped out of the cemetery, over ‘the bridge of sighs’ into the cathedral. It’s an imposing Gothic church built in the Middle Ages. Saint Kentigern (more widely known as St Mungo) supposedly built the first Christian church in Scotland here. The tomb of the saint lies in the lower crypt.

stained glass window in cathedralA stained glass tells the story of St Mungo and the miracles associated with him (symbols that form the Glasgow coat of arms):

The bird that never flew
The tree that never grew
The bell that never rang
The fish that never swam

Another stained glass window pays homage to Glasgow’s tradesmen: bakers, barbers, bonnetmakers, bookmakers, coopers, cordiners, dyers, fleshers, gardeners, maltmen, masons, weavers and wood binders; crafts that are now largely confined to the annals of history.

Alan called us over to show us a neatly hand-scripted list of parish servicemen who had lost their lives during the war. He pointed to one of the names on the list: Driver: C Findley RASC, and said: “My brother-in-law”.

“But Tom’s uncle died in the ’80s,” I said in a puzzled voice.

Guild window details“I know,” said Alan. “It’s a mistake. Charlie took great delight in showing people his name on the memorial, claiming he was one of the living dead. He thought it a great joke.” “But how did he end up on the list?”

“When he was evacuating to Dunkirk, on the run from the Germans, his truck took a wrong turn. He ended up on a beach some miles adrift from Dunkirk. Missing, it was presumed he was one of the Dunkirk dead.”

A fortuitous wrong turn indeed.

Glasgow survived the heavy bombardment of the Second World War and the decline of its manufacturing base, and is on the up again. It’s no coincidence that Glasgow was chosen to be ‘European City of Culture’ in 1990. Since then Glasgow has gone from strength to strength.

Riverside transport museumWe visited the Clydeside, currently being regenerated with its smart new Riverside Museum, a theatre – the Armadillo, and the science museum tower. Over in the West End we discovered a vibrant hub of fine eateries, trendy boutiques and night clubs set among the cleaned-up sandstone Victorian buildings; handsome historic university buildings and museums set in leafy parks and hilly bluffs.

We ate in ‘The Black Sheep’ and ‘Two Fat Ladies’ and tasted some of the best food I have ever had. Yes, Scottish fare: tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips), haggis, black pudding and sticky toffee pudding; food that was surprisingly light and full of flavour .

Glasgow: unpretentious, vivacious, humorous, plain-speaking, rough at the edges, but ultimately warm and generous, (A bit like my father-in-law, I discovered) – yet witty and intelligent. Go there, and you might have to rethink your view of the city. I had to.


Glasgow City Centre Whisky Tour

If You Go:

Glasgow International Airport is only 8 miles from the city centre and is well served with taxis and buses. In Glasgow itself, getting around the city is easy with a comprehensive network of buses, trains and the underground railway system, known locally as “The clockwork orange”. It’s worth taking a coach up to The Trossachs and Highlands, just a stone’s throw from Glasgow. The hills, lochs and the pure clear northern light are the perfect contrast to the bustling city.

 

About the author:
Helen Moat is a British teacher and travel writer. She has won several travel writing competitions, including runner-up with the British Guild of Travel Writers, and has been published in The Daily Telegraph. Her greatest passions in life are music, travel and writing (not surprisingly).
Find other travel pieces by her at: moathouse-moathouseblogspotcom.blogspot.com

All photos are by Helen Moat:
1. Glasgow University
2. Alan Moat (subject of story) outside the cathedral
3. Outside the Cathedral
4. The Cathedral Interior
5. Details from the Guild Window (The Bell, The Bird The Fish And The Tree)
6. Details from the Guild Window
7. Details from the Guild Window
8. Riverside Museum (of transport)

Tagged With: Glasgow attractions, Scotland travel Filed Under: UK Travel

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