This text tells the story of Miss Cranston, an eccentric middle-aged businesswoman, and her sustained patronage of a young designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh - a partnership that was to result in the development of Mackintosh's styles in interior design in the famous tearooms in Glasgow. Though her brother, Stuart Cranston, was their inventor, it was Miss Cranston (who opened her business in 1878) who was to develop the tearooms that, in a climate of changing social habits and temperance, were to prove so popular in Glasgow. When she had money behind her for expansion, she hired the Glasgow-style pioneer George Walton to do the interiors for a new tearoom in Buchanan Street and, attracted by rumpus over Glasgow School of Art posters, tried out a notorious young architect, Mackintosh, on some mural decorations.
The commission was an opening for Mackintosh in the field of interior decoration and the beginning of an association lasting for 20 years, including his first major furniture designs for Argyle Street and his first complete interior at Ingram Street, and culminating with the Willow Tea Rooms in 1903, "her best place", where Mackintosh designed everything from the chic exterior and the silver and purple salon de luxe with glittering glass, down to the waitresses' dresses.
- ISBN10 1862050589
- ISBN13 9781862050587
- Publish Date 18 September 1997
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 7 May 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Pavilion Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 96
- Language English