Willow Tea Rooms Chair
Design Date 1903
Designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928, Scottish)
Media silver painted wood reupholstered in what is believed to be the original color
Dimensions 40 1/2 x 21 1/4 x 17 3/4 inches
This chair was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for the Room de Luxe at the Willow Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow in 1903. Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald were commissioned to remodel a four-story building for the entrepreneur, Miss Kate Cranston. This was the fourth tea room they would design for Cranston, but the first in which Mackintosh was given total control over the design. The Room de Luxe, where this chair came from, was a more exclusive ladies tea room in the upper level that overlooked Sauchiehall Street. Gordon Kerr, who wrote a book on the Tea Rooms, describes the interior as a richly decorated space with “a grey carpet, a silk upholstered dado, chairs and settees upholstered in rich rose-purple, tables painted silver and Mackintosh’s characteristic high-backed chairs.” The Willow Tea Rooms have recently been reopened after being meticulously restored by the Willow Tea Rooms Trust.
ON VIEW in Art Nouveau Gallery 4
Markings unmarked
Credit Line Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Accession Number CG0520
