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* The Art Corner (Artist)

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) Scottish

Dining room suite

Title Dining room suite
Artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Gallery The Fine Art Society
Work Date 1919-1919
Category Furniture
Materials American black walnut inlaid with mother-of-pearl and aluminium, comprising a dining table, six dining chairs and a service table.

Description This dining-room suite was made for Harry Franklin, a director of the engineering firm of W.J.Bassett-Lowke in Northampton. It is a close variant of an oak dining room suite designed by Mackintosh for W.J.Bassett-Lowke¹s country home, Candida Cottage, at Roade, near Northampton in 1918-19, which included dining chairs and also a service trolley, which was designed at Bassett-Lowke¹s request in June 1918. The genesis of the design of the table was in 1916, when Bassett-Lowke designed an oval dining table for the walnut dining room of his town house at 78 Derngate, Northampton.
Roger Billcliffe writes: The furniture is probably the most modern and utilitarian Mackintosh ever designed. The carved organic decoration of the early Glasgow period has gone altogether . . . Shapes are simple and robust; the decoration is quiet . . . Certainly it anticipated much of the best in English design of the 1930s by men such as R.D.Russell, looking forward almost to the utility designs produced during and after the Second World War.
The Candida Cottage suite was of stained and waxed oak inlaid with Radolith. A dining room suite was also made for Frank Jones, Mrs Bassett-Lowke¹s brother, and a bedroom suite also based on that designed by Mackintosh for Bassett-Lowke was made for the Franklins.
Provenance Harry F.R. Franklin (1874-1965); Mrs H.F.R. Franklin, Northampton and Radwell, to 1980; Private Collection ..[more]