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

Go Billy Liddel Steaming Down The Middle.

I grew up with stories of footballing legends.

Roy of the Rovers was staple diet.

 You went with it, collecting football cards could swallow up all your earnings. Those hard earned pennies from minding the cars that parked down your road, every Saturday home game. It was a perk of living so close to Anfield.

The cars did not actually need minding, but it was a way of developing a interaction with people.

 It instilled inside you, from an early age, that if you put some time in, and you were polite,and you had a go, you could earn some money.

You would chase towards a car before your mate got there “Mind your car Sir” we always got a smile.

I remember one day a massive chrome encrusted Mercedes the likes of which you never saw on the terraced streets of Anfield parked down our street.

 I had to patiently wait till after the match had finished, but I got a shilling, the usual rate was a couple of pennies or maybe a tanner.

The takings always went up when we won the match.

 Saturday afternoons would be spent taking the results on Final Score which usually came up after the wrestling with Mick McManus and co, including  the strangely named Kendo Nagasaki. I always remember knowing Giant Haystacks, he was a bouncer on the Robin Hood camp disco in Prestatyn where you would be dragged for a holiday.

Although we didn't have a TV, until 1966 when a special effort was made because of  the World Cup.

 Those footie cards always seemed to have lots of swaps, you could just not get Roger Hunt.

I had loads of Tommy Smiths and Tommy Lawrence's but Roger Hunt was gold dust.

Last week I lingered in some family archives that I had been wanting to tidy up for over a decade and I come across a Liverpool Echo, and it was old.

7^th November 1957.

What was strange was that the front page was in colour, and emblazoned upon that front page was a hero of a generation before mine....Billy Liddel.

I thought Billy Liddle was a giant, as that's how he was always talked about.
The greatest goalscorer ever they said, and there it was in black and white and red all over, the statistics.
 It must have been my grandfathers, who I never knew. My Grandmother will have kept it. She would often sing out in chorus as if involuntarily Go Billy Liddel, steaming down the middle.
He was a hero. They immortalised him in pubs and factories all over the city. A working class hero was something to be.
Even Evertonian's respected him in the same way as we, with, the Dixie Dean.History is not only about posh art, its about the everyday.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/red-or-dead-i-turn-into-anorak.html

This is the week that Liverpool go seven points clear and although Man City have a few games in hand the next match, the Chelsea match is pivotal we could win the league. Alex Ferguson said the first thing he wanted to do was knock Liverpool off their perch. He must be sick as a parrot this week when ex Everton manager, David Moyes is sacked...the chosen one, by him.
It took 15 years for Moyes to get Everton in the Champions League, but he  has finally done it.
By resigning as Everton manager.
Chelsea have a new cat now, that's what they called their goalie in the 60's.
The Cat. I had a couple of footie cards of Peter Bonetti, The Cat, and a few Peter Osgood's.
You had to eat so much plastic tasting chewing gum and all you get is  a load of Martin Chivers.
 They must have sent all the Roger Hunts to London and sent the London strikers up here.

The Kop hero now of course is Suarez, who hasn't always done the right thing but he may be winning round most of his critics.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/suarez-scum-ashamed-to-be-liverpudlian.html

I read the paper as if it was the Whizzer, or whatever comic it was that that Roy of the Rovers always dribbled past one, then another , then he would dummy the goalkeeper and yeeeess, he scores.

I read on, and was alarmingly reminded that the paper I was reading, dated 1957 was a year that Liverpool were in the second division.
Then the great Bill Shankly arrived.

I am to have it framed, its history.

Liverpool Town Hall As A Giant Advertising Placard For Mobile Phones-How Tacky Is That?

It is with deep regret that my city council is being run by people who neither wish to or do indeed respect Liverpool's World Heritage Site.
It is hard to imagine at a time when Liverpool is on the Unesco "In Danger" List that this placement of an advertising hoarding on our Town Hall could be done.
Some time ago the Mayor Anderson helped me remove an advertisement for a giant advert for A Burger In A Bun next to the Listed Lyceum at the bottom of Bold Street.

I have today written to him asking how this unfortunate occasion has been sanctioned.

I wrote this for LPT at the time

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/lyceum-bold-street-whopper-job-well.html

Read the letter about illegal hoardings. click above 

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/lyceum-bold-street-liverpool-how-can.html

Mr Anderson,

It is very disappointing to note that Liverpool's town hall has been turned into a giant advertising placard for mobile phones.

I know you think that Liverpool's World Heritage Site status is no more than a plaque on the wall in the Town Hall and that the city is now about making money out of heritage sites, but this is a step too far.

You will recall agreeing with me that a advert for Burger King was inappropriate for the adjacent building to the Lyceum. You claimed to have it removed.

So how can you find this acceptable.

I am not aware of any planning applications for this event of placing a huge tacky advertisement in a WHS, which is also in a conservation area and on a listed building.

Would you please advise me of any planning applications that have been considered by the planning committee.

Would you also advise me who sanctioned this idea.

Also would you advise me how much is being paid by the advertisers.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Wayne Colquhoun.

Dr Christopher Dresser-STUDIES IN DESIGN. Published by Cassell, Petter and Galpin.

I was very pleased this week to acquire this Folio entitled STUDIES IN DESIGN by Christopher Dresser which is printed to the highest standards.

Though the binding is in a distressed state the plates inside are mostly as they were when the left Cassell, Petter and Galpin print works.

Each plate is frameable. Though I will never break up a book.   

It has been reprinted but as an original of 1876 It appears to be quite rare.

Its all been said about how far ahead Dresser's designs were.

Though a lot of them are now more esoteric than commercial there is no doubting his place in the history of design, not just in this country but in the world.

If my memory serves me correctly and I am typing this as I think, he collected glass for Louis Comfort Tiffany on his travels round the globe. Where he collected designs, quite a lot of them in the Japanese taste  Not all designs are actually by him, but by his studio. This was a common practice in Victorian times, as an example in today's terms, we can say, Lord Foster cant do all the drawings for all his architectural projects.

Here in splendid colour we can see the vibrancy and attention to detail that was applied in a Victorian age of heavy brown furniture.  If I also remember rightly I was once told by a learned authority that his father was a tax inspector in Liverpool.

I thought you may like to share the beauty of some of the plates. 

And I thought I would like to share it.

Click on the link below to read the e-book on line.

https://archive.org/details/Studiesdesign00Dres

Arts and Crafts Candlestick In The Manner of WAS Benson-Piece of the Week

Copper and Brass Arts and Crafts Candlestick. 

In the manner of WAS Benson.

This is a fantastic piece of design.

Reflect back to a time before electricity when a candlestick could be knocked over, so this design is counter-balanced with the round ball weight that is part of the design.

It was also designed to be carried in the hand and placed down safely.

10cm high by 24cm long

It is in overall good condition for its age.

 It has a few knocks but I would want to see this as it has been used. It would benefit from a bit of a polish. 

This is possibly a design by........ 

Carl Deffner was born 13 Oct 1856 in Esslingen. On 11 June 1892 he married Charlotte (Lolo) Schoenleber. Records show only one son for Carl and his wife, Karl "Max" Deffner (1900-1985) who was an engineer.   Deffner died in 1948.

Antique Dealers Are Breaking Up Their Brown Furniture To Keep Warm.

Up and down the country, they are burning their stock to keep warm.

Faced with one of the worst winters on record they have no option.

With gas prices at an all time high and electricity now a luxury, they have to make ends meet.

In an age when most Victorian tables are now cheaper to burn than buying coal and with massive warehouses to heat. 

There is only one option reduce storage costs by burning wardrobes. 

They are only worth a tenner at auction anyhow.

What the bloody 'ell has happened to Mahogany, Rosewood and Walnut this is ridiculous.

Antique furniture is now that cheap that you cant fuel your fire for less.

Can you believe it, the furniture retail index has dropped again for the umpteenth year on the run. Its crazy. One dealer I know had his pension tied up in quality stuff and he told me its worth a fifth of what it was.

It cant get any cheaper And Joe Public educated by Bargain Hunt are more interested in cheap and cheerful than quality.

Where is all the money going to? 

 MDF and chipboard rubbish? 

What is wrong with the public? What is wrong with the public's sense of reality when they would rather add to Sweden's balance of trade, while antique dealers are smashing up their chest of drawers, just to stay warm through this storm spread winter.

What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

Cant you give them a break, they are hard working people who deserve to have food and clothes for their families. Some of them are second and third generation antique dealers, some even more. There may not be a fourth. What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

And the great British public wont even give them a meagre crust.

Buy antiques now before they are all burnt.....or painted with Farrow and Ball.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Henry%20Sandons%20letter%20to%20the%20Times

Its all the same shops these days, they say. They love it when they go to France and find all those Brocante shops full of things that the French wont buy.

They bring pieces home, and tell everyone as if its a trophy, “Its French”. Then they go and add to China's economy and accessories it in John Lewis with stuff made by people paid two pound a month. While the local antique shops are disappearing and will soon become as rear as a glass cased Dodo.

Antique dealers are green they stop things being destroyed, they recycle.

Nowadays if you recycle a bit of wet cardboard or a squashed milk carton there is definitely someone who will give out a grant for it.

If the person running the recycling firm is a black, one legged lesbian well there are hundreds of thousands available. So where is the help for antique recyclers?

Where is the aid to stop them going to the wall, going out of business and allowing their shops to be taken over by charity shops, that get tax relief.

The same charity shops are generally full of the lower middle class trying to get the stuff before the antique dealers get it. 

There was recently one tweed suited  twerp on the Antique Road show, proud as punch that he had bought a vase worth two grand in a charity shop for £37.50. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “No £36.50” he corrected the valuer.

He should have been made to pay the charity that he robbed, back, or the staff in the shop who valued it, without getting a second opinion, should be made to pay.

Whatever the case, the charity was done out of a couple of grand while Billy Brewster wallowed in glory as if he was clever.

If it had of been forty five quid he wouldn’t have chanced it.

Just think how much Oxfam lose a year by not getting the prices right.

So mahogany and walnut is out of style and decades of furniture dealing experience does not count for a jot these days.

Most warehouse-men have burnt their Millers Guide years ago, to keep warm, because they are not worth the paper they are written on any more. They are so out of date, that it is hilarious, especially when someone comes into the shop trying to sell something quoting their prices.

Though its no joke when a member of the public comes in the shop taking about the table they bought 15 years ago for three hundred quid and says “There’s one in the Millers Guide for £550” and you have to tell them its worth a hundred if they are lucky.

So does anyone care if your heritage is broken up and burnt because its cheaper being used for cooking on a barbecue than charcoal.

The exception of course has been Art Deco furniture. 

This is strange as most of it that was made in England is, lets say, not the best quality.

Yes there are Epstein and Hille, but most of the stuff that passes for Art Deco may in fact be post war.

The look is there though. The blonde veneers seem to brighten up a room where mahogany will dull it.

But I still love a good grain, and I hope an appreciation for quality timber will be revived and it will come back.

But for now, Art Deco furniture and post war design is where the money has gone. It looks so modern in an apartment.

And when all the brown furniture has been burnt so dealers can stay warm,some bright spark will realise that a good patina is back in style, and everyone will run around buying Georgian again and it will all start all start to go up in price....only this time there may be less of it around.

Who will be the brave one who will hold their nerve and stack a warehouse high with good stock, the stuff they used to want years ago? Will they be the clever ones?

Because the stuff is for nothing it cant go any cheaper, though someone did said to me last year......and it has.   

WMF Art Nouveau Card Tray-Piece of the Week.

This is a nice Art Nouveau design on a pewter tray 22.5 cm long. It was made in Germany probably 1899, though they did continue designs up to the start of the First World War where they would have been making rather different styles that were not designed as tableware or decorative objects. The original name of the company is.

Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrttembergische_Metallwarenfabrik

The Art Nouveau maidens hair merges with the entrallic floral decoration that is so typical of the period.

Though we in Britain helped to start the art nouveau style with our rediscovery of arts and crafts, the continental factories excelled at design. Though 20 years later the Bauhaus would industrialise design.

WMF will have been sold in the likes of Liberty in London.

  This is a nice way to own a piece of original Art Nouveau at a reasonable start price of maybe £250.