Willow Tea-room

View of the gallery tea-room, showing the central area; The best-known Mackintosh interiors were those created for Miss Catherine Cranston's four tea-rooms in Glasgow: Buchanan Street (1896), Argyle Street (1897), Ingram Street (1900) and the Willow (1903), of which only the last-mentioned survives at 199 Sauchiehall Street. In the Willow tea-room Mackintosh had total control of the project both inside and outside; his wife contributed some of the decorative motifs. On the ground floor he set up an unpainted frieze of plaster panels, their angular outlines leading the eye deeper into the stems and branches of the willow wood. Above, in the Room de Luxe, a leaded-glass frieze with pink and green insets was placed against white painted walls, and on the curved bay, leaf-shaped mirror glass shimmered like the stirring of willow leaves. Mackintosh had already developed in domestic commissions austere all-white ensembles of decoration with a few pieces of slender, white furniture, but such refinement of construction was not practical in a public place. In the Room de Luxe the chairs, of two sizes, are silver with purple upholstery; the tops of the higher chairs are pierced by a grid of squares, a favourite Mackintosh device. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/7/2008