Buildings
© Courtesy of RCAHMS
Doorpiece, 64 Queen Street, New Town, Edinburgh, 1790
64 Queen Street in Edinburgh’s New Town, built in 1790 for the Earl of Wemyss, has one of the most splendid of town house entrances in the city, with input from a range of craftsmen. The finely carved yellow sandstone at the ground floor level of the four-storey house is carved in a manner that is seen along the length of the terrace, called ‘channelled rustication.’ The stonework at basement level was roughly hewn and the upper floors are finely chiselled. The doorway is framed with fluted columns and an ornamental frieze containing rosette motifs. The iron railings and oil lamp stands are designed to match and were probably made in Falkirk at the famous Carron Iron works, where craftsmen producing fine castings worked along side the mass produced output of gutters and pipes, everyday pots and pans and military iron wares. Skilled metal workers also produced the finely detailed lace-like semi-circular wrought iron fanlight. The latter varied greatly from house to house, with the finer the detail the greater the expense and prestige.
© Courtesy of RCAHMS
Interior of the Willow Tea Room, Glasgow, 1903
This is a photograph of the Willow Tea Room in Glasgow, which occupied an open plan space at 217 Sauchiehall Street in one of Glasgow’s most fashionable shopping streets. It was designed for restaurateur Kate Cranston by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) while a partner at the architectural practice of Honeyman Keppie and Mackintosh. This photograph of the front saloon was published in the Glasgow Herald shortly after it opened in 1903. Such was Mackintosh’s international reputation that the photograph was also published in Germany’s leading art journal, Dekorative Kunst, two years later.
The freestanding structure in the foreground of the photograph houses two tables with specially designed chairs, making four dining place-settings in total. The structure is topped with an elaborate wrought iron flower-stand comprising a broad glass bowl caged within a wrought iron corona. Mackintosh’s interest in unusual divisions of architectural space created open-sided eating ‘islands’ for Cranston’s clientele, providing the occupants with a sense of enclosure by offering a private space within a public one. The photograph provides a glimpse into the general lunchroom at the rear and into the whiter, brighter Salon de Luxe on the upper mezzanine floor. Decorative metalwork, painted wood and decorative gesso panels were handcrafted elements in Mackintosh’s elegant and functional tea room interiors. Wrought iron uprights and rails divide the downstairs lunchrooms from the more exclusive dining and leisure areas higher in the building.