Armchair

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed this armchair in 1897 for Catherine Cranston’s Argyle Street Tearooms in Glasgow. Though the chair adheres to the strict linearity of many of Mackintosh’s designs, in this instance he has enlivened the surfaces by piercing each of the side panels with a crescent-like motif reminiscent of a bird in flight. One of these chairs appears in a contemporary photograph of the Luncheon Room of the Argyle Street Tearooms, but it is not known how many were made. This chair has a particularly interesting provenance, as it passed down through the family of one of the tearoom’s employees.

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