Mackintosh furniture

Designer: C.R. Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow in 1868 and died in 1928. His work is considered to be an important precurser to the Modern Movement.

Mackintosh’s name is mainly connected with the design for the Glasgow School of Art: he was the animator and most authoritative exponent of the group known as the “Glasgow School” and he distinguished himself principally because he recovered the most authentic values of the Scottish idiom and of neo-Gothic taste.
The group, also named “the School of Ghosts”, became known throughout Europe – in Liege in 1895, London in 1896, Vienna in 1900, Turin in 1902, Moscow in 1903, Budapest etc.Besides the School of Art, the most interesting works are undoubtedly: the “Windyhill” house at Kilmacolm (1900), the “Hill House” at Helensburgh (1902-3), the arrangement of the Derngate house, Northampton (1916-20), and the decorative work in Miss Cranston’s Tea-Rooms in Glasgow.

Since 1972, Filippo Alison has been helping Cassina to make the enterprise more organic, and to assimilate the research necessary to reconstruct the basic ideas of each project, ideas which differ from one Master to another.

In 1972 the first contract was made whereby the University of Glasgow, owner of the artistic estate of Mackintosh, granted Cassina the exclusive access to drawings, sketches and other original documents, in order to produce and place on the market re-editions of the furniture designed by the great Scottish architect.