Showing posts with label Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Show all posts

Friday 21 September 2018

Joseph Hoffman Die Fledermaus Chair-Piece of the Week.

Stained Beech Bent and solid wood frame. Turned legs.
This is a chair with balls.
Designed 1905-08 by Joseph Hoffman for the cafe at the  Caberet Fledermaus which opened in October 1907 in Vienna  .

Fledermaus translated simply means flying mouse, or Bat.

Its wickedly simple construction makes this chair, one of the most influential designs of the early 20th century.

Noted as model no 728 in J & J Kohns furniture catalogue.

It is hard to now believe that this piece of early modernism was made during the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts period. One Hundred years ago.
Its simple construction lends it to mass production, something that both Thonet and Jacob and Joseph Kohn were the predominant manufacturers of. 
They were always on the look out for interesting shapes and at the time of putting this chair into production and were largely responsible for making affordable furniture for the masses.

Gerbruder Thonet had put into production Model no14 in 1859. This chair is still in production today.
I have sold several Model no 1 which was manufactured in 1866 and this rocking chair still seems worthy of a trendy loft apartment today originally manufactured with its woven cane seat and back into its solid and bentwood frame. 
Chair design also owes a debt of gratitude to the wrought iron semi cantilevered chair that was shown at the great exhibition of 1851. Thought to have been designed by R.W. Winfield & Co it still has a deep buttoned upholstery seat and arm pads that sat on a slatted frame. 
This was being produced, in a slightly altered guise in Germany by L & C Arnold and it must have influenced many.
The construction of chairs was altered by fashion and at the turn of the 20th century simplicity was required in certain circles and this was a democratisation of furniture bringing simple style into the homes of many.
While Louis Majorelle and Galle were making works of art in solid mahogany with gilt mounts and exhibiting them to an international audience. The quiet revolution was taking place.
When Marcel Beuer designed B33 in 1927 made from tubular steel with a simple leather seat it was manufactured by the progressive company Gebruder Thonet in Frankenberg from 1929.
 It is still being manufactured today.
Would there have been a Bauhaus without Joseph Hoffman? Probably not. 
Palais Stoclet designed by Hoffman was a turning point in architecture for many.
Hoffman met Charles Rennie MacKintosh in 1902 and the combustion of ideas from two continents certainly fuelled the fire in the bellies of the Wiener Werkstatte of Vienna. Hailed as a genius by the Viennese. MacKintosh would die largely a forgotten man in his own country but be held as a everlasting beacon of hope in Europe.
The Die Fledermaus chair was originally painted white and these original chairs now command a kings ransom but this version is shown in a 1916 sales catalogue for J& J Kohn as model no 728.
This is a chair with balls. 
Something that along with the chequer board motif was Hoffmans trade mark. 
He would come to be know as square Hoffman.
And it works in all its variations of the theme its simple decoration, less is more is now proving ever more popular with a new generation who seem to have abandoned the past, wanting it only in limited quantities.
This chair, one of a pair has an original label underneath that says THONET MUNDUS. Mundus were a manufacturer and merged with  J & J Kohn in 1914 to furnish the growing sales of the company.
Thonet merged with Mundus in 1921
The original fabric is very interesting it appears to be a design that Gustav Klimt could have done, or was it a general swirl that he adopted from what was around him. Klimt was an original member of the Weimer Werkstatte.
This design has now taken on legendary status.
When you say museum quality.
I sold a exacting pair to The Walker art Gallery along with a side table some time ago.
I held this pair back. 

Its now time to let them go and let someone else have the pleasure of them.



 The pair are in original condition bearing Thonet Mundus-Borlova labels to the underside. 

Price £3750 for the pair.

















Thursday 1 May 2014

Charles Rennie Mackintosh-Did Liverpool Ruin His Career?





It may, or may not be true but it is certain that Liverpool played a substantial part in CRM’s life that was not at all helpful to his future or his esteem.
Picture left Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Right a very similar looking,  Herbert Mcnair
Not many people outside the art world know Charles Rennie Mackintosh had links with Liverpool or that half of the Glasgow Four actually lived there, at 54 Oxford Street. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/doves/54oxfordst/index.aspx

The principal rooms at 54 Oxford St were published by the Studio magazine in 1901 in a special edition devoted to ‘Modern Domestic Architecture and Decoration’.

Herbert McNair McNair was the head of applied art in Liverpool
His wife taught embroidery and enameling.
Most of the furniture from Oxford Street was in Sudley Art Gallery before it was butchered by Dr David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming the current Director.      
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html
They moved to Liverpool since 1899.
Here is a Mcnair design for a poster.
How they would influence the likes of Cassandra Annie Walker who worked for the Della Robbia Pottery.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-della-robbia-pottery-by-peter-hyland.html



The city was moving forward at a brisk pace and there was work to be had, especially for talented artists and tutors.





So important was Liverpool to CRM or so he thought, that he submitted a design for the then proposed Anglican Cathedral in 1902.

He and his wife Margaret would be able to join his soul mates. The four would be re-united perhaps.

We all love Giles Gilbert Scott’s sandstone monument but what would have been the sight that greets all those people who come to the city on easy flights now.

That comes, from all over the world. What if the other Scot, CRM’s design had been chosen.

Would it now be held, in as high regard, as the Barcelona Guadi Cathedral?

We will never know.
Would we have a structure that went way above the usual realm of architecture, something CRM, as with the Glasgow School of Art, was as capable of creating.
Such was the inner spirit of a man who could capture the spirit of an age.
Alas it was thought to play a bit safer with a more traditional design.



Mackintosh did not submit an outlandish design but for sure he would have changed it as the project went on.

Charles Reilly, later to be made a knight of the realm, who was an engineer, also submitted a design. Reilly defied the Gothic brief and submitted a classical one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Herbert_Reilly
He would be appointed Roscoe Professor of Architecture in 1902.
F.M Simpson was his predecessor.
Augustus John had left the city and The Art Sheds were swept away along with its teachings of applied arts. McNair briefly taught at the Sandon Studios. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/doves/artsheds/index.aspx

Reilly inherited a regime that was looking to the Ruskin ideals of the Gothic.

Ruskin had condemned the Renaissance and said Italian classicism was not correct styling for our nation. Even though it had long been the chosen method of build.

Waterhouse was the darling architect. Two years after his Lime Street building was erected it was covered in soot from the station trains.

Reilly thought the 19th century building of the picturesque had replaced clear thinking with sentimentality. Though he built a block of cottages, the only executed commission for Lever at 15-27 Lower Road, Port Sunlight.

They were almost Regency and were criticized because the veranda blocked out light to the lower floors. Lever himself considered demolishing them.

Reilly rejected Art Nouveau and its derivatives. But what did he build?
 America was showing the way forward.
Louis Sullivan and his pupils rebuilt Chicago and thoughts were being given to the high-rise city block style.

Mackintosh had a mixed reaction, when opened, to the now world acclaimed Glasgow School of Art.

When he started it was at the cutting edge and when he had finished construction it was labelled out of date and old fashioned.

The students seemed to hate it. Fashions were changing.

We do see the change in Mackintosh designs over the years, some of his shapes become geometric and angular almost anticipating the modern style that was later phrased as Art Deco after the 1925 Exhibition of Art Decoratif in Paris.

It was obvious that he was misunderstood by a lot of his peers. Well how were they to know that his inspiration would help mould designs by Joseph Maria Olbrich and his colleagues at the Vienna Secessionist, into world changing principles of design that would metamorphose into the Weimar Werkstatte that in turn, would influence the Bauhaus?

And we wouldn’t let him build a cathedral.

Sir Charles Reilly who would later travel with Lutyens through India, was one of the founding fathers of the first school of Urban design in the country here in Liverpool, and no sooner had he got power, he sacked McNair.

Mackintosh in 1927 called him “A bombastic second rate professor”.

Reilly had a new style of Beaux Arts. He wanted to make the city the Athens of the North.

Ironic, or even Ionic that Mackintosh Architecture, in Glasgow, is now more famous than that of Alexander “Greek” Thomson who built monumental, where they also wanted to become the Athens of the, slightly further, North.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thomson

Gavin Stamps who taught in Glasgow, says in his lecture of 9th November 1996 at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool. “Thomson was the main ambassador of a revival style that never went away”
He went on to say that Glasgow has a grid pattern that links it closely with the style adopted in America.

Mackintosh would later go on to call Reilly, in a letter found in a letter, he said that “the American system was wrong and that Reilly did not even reproduce it effectively”, such was his hatred for the man who disliked Arts and Crafts yet wanted to be part of Lutyens.

Even though Lutyens early style was built around the same rustic ideals as that of Voysey albeit with a slightly differing tinge.

Lutyens was given a crack at the Catholic Cathedral though he only built the Crypt. Oh how I hated it, when they started the building of what Arthur Dooley christened Paddy’s Wigwam in the 70’s.

It was a whole scale shift away from the basic principles of the craftsman that previous generations had endeavoured to uphold.

It leaked like siv, like a giant colander. They tried to be different.

Maybe they too should have played safe with a recognised design, and built it out of sandstone, but it was done on the cheap.
I don’t hate it and there are a lot of people who now like it.
There is no accounting for taste. Jonathan Glancey called it a space rocket.

So what would a Mackintosh cathedral have been like?
What would have happened if Charles Rennie had been living here in Liverpool?

Would the ego of Charles Reilly with his rich patronage by the likes of Lord Leverhume the soap magnate have allowed it?

There is no doubt that some of his pupils such as Herbert Rowse left monuments for the future, in Reilly’s favoured Beaux Arts style. He later went on to adopt a Dutch style for the Philharmonic Hall.

But Mackintosh could create something special out of a couple of lengths of 3 by 2 joined together and made into a cabinet.

He had something that appeared unique with the enrichment of his designs with his Celtic roots and the ability to extract an emotion from a dead piece of timber, from a plank, and make it come alive.

There is something of the primeval about some of his designs that tap into the inner core.

Imagine him being let loose on a whole Cathedral.

However it was not to be and the city did not have a lasting legacy that would echo the links between the two great cities of Glasgow and Liverpool and their Celtic roots. The two cities at times, appear to be hued out of the same seam of sandstone that backbones the country. That gives them strength and resilience as if made from girders, that tackles adversity head on.

But how many towns are envious that Mackintosh was not one of theirs and never built for them. I must say I have a long lasting feeling that if we had a Cathedral that straddles the highest point on the Mersey by the Big Mac we would all be better off.

Was this the turning point for a career that could have taken him stratospheric to one of the greats and not just a house builder up north that, still, no matter where you look at it from, he inspired the whole of Europe.

I could ask a pertinent question.
 What did Charles Reilly build?

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch_Mackintosh/summaryresults.fwx?searchterm=keyword+has+furniture&browseMode=on&browseSet=furniture+and+furniture+designs
Hunterian collection


Thursday 6 February 2014

The DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY by Peter Hyland



Peter Hyland called in today with a copy of his new book ‘THE DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY’

I had given him an image of a piece that I consider the best piece of Della Robbia that I have seen. I bought it in France.

Peter wrote the book The HERCULANEUM POTTERY Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory.

My image was not as high resolution as he needed for publication, which is a shame, but there you go. I love it.


The book is enriched with illustrations and on first glance it looks extremely comprehensive.
Della Robbia had a brief lifespan from 1894-1906. It was founded by Harold Rathbone.
Walter Crane attended a VIP ceremony at the Walker Art Gallery on 10th February 1894 when the prominent speaker Sir William Forwood spoke of the need to keep tradition with pottery and the applied arts on Merseyside. And he said he is pleased to think that Mr Rathbone and some members of his family had already made a departure in that direction.
In the same month Della Robbia opened.

You have to ask in retrospect why a pottery was formed, to produce wares of an antique Italian tradition than of a thrusting enterprise in a modern age.

Arts and Crafts had swept the country and we see at this time the same principles being laid down in numerous potteries the length and breath of the British Isles.
Liberty sold Della Robbia.

The Birkenhead based pottery had a retail outlet in Berry Street Liverpool.

Some of its pottery ladies would be trained at the Art Sheds under the influence of Herbert MacNair and his wife Francis MacDonald who were half of the Glasgow Four. The others being Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald.

CRM would submit a design for the proposed Anglican Cathedral.

Cassandra Annie Walker who is recognised as one of the top pottery ladies at Della Robbia must have fell under the influence of The Glasgow Style.

Her designs for the cover page of The Sphinx certainly bear that out.

That style would be swept away by Charles Reilly at the Liverpool School. He hated Art Nouveau and led the city into a Beaux Arts style, not only in his architectural teaching but also in the practice of applied arts and decoration.

The Della Robbia covers such a small period in the development of art and architecture on Merseyside, slightly idealised with sentimentality and rustic ideals.

This would be swept away with the industrial scale killing in the Great War that would employ methods of mass production that would later be employed in the domestic manufacture of almost everything.

Though it closed in 1906 we see through the beginnings of Della Robbia a microcosm of society and its ideals.

Della Robbia prices have been on the increase for a while now, but beware, as a potter, I see it as some of the worst pottery that should not have been let out of the workshops…and some of the best.

The pottery is an oxymoron of itself.

My personal opinion is that its rustic antique style is hiding, on a far too often occasion, bad workmanship.

Yet ‘Boy and Lanthorn’ a panel by Conrad Dressler which was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in 1895 is of the highest quality in design and workmanship.

Frank Watkin was the thrower. And Dressler was the chief designer and modeller until 1896. Carlo Manzoni took over the role in 1898.

It was quite a going concern.

There is a huge collection in the Williamson Art Gallery.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/williamson-art-gallery.html


They designed a fountain for the Savoy Hotel and a monumental fountain in Newsham Park with Hippocampus holding a monumental bowl aloft.

There are amazing pots and plaques and tile panels.

The main decorators were….well you will have to buy this well put together book that Peter has exhaustively compiled for your delectation.

Wednesday 5 February 2014

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Cabinet pops out after being lost for 50 years.

It is some time ago now but whilst writing an article about Mackintosh and his links to Liverpool I recalled this article I had seen. It always makes you think just what is still out there when a recorded design surfaces after being lost for at least half a century. Check your attics!


Mackintosh cabinet offered without reserve takes £36,000

February 2013

This Arts and Crafts music cabinet, entered into a recent sale at Robertson’s of Kinbuck, near Dunblane, without reserve, turned out to be a hitherto lost design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The consignor was a local lady who had stored it in her garage for several years. Her grandmother had purchased it from a Dumfries saleroom sometime in the 1950s although its significance was never appreciated.

Research shows that a watercolour for the design (available online) is in the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow. Signed and dated 1898, it is inscribed Music Cabinet for Mrs Pickering, Braxfield, Lanark.

A stencilled or embroidered panel would have covered the shelves below the stained glass.

Mackintosh produced cabinets with the same distinctive cornice for other clients during the same year, including those made for the Edinburgh printer Alex Seggie.

After vigorous bidding in the saleroom on January 24, the Kinbuck cabinet was bought by a trade buyer for £36,000 (plus 15% buyer's premium).

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2013/feb/04/mackintosh-cabinet-offered-without-reserve-takes-36000/?utm_source=newsletter_up540&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=update_mc&utm_content=ATG-story2