Chair for Hill House
A ladder-back chair so tall and slender that it is more a line in the room than a seat.
In 1902–03 Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed the whole of Hill House, with its furniture, lamps and wall decoration. The chair stood in a white bedroom, where its tall black silhouette stood out against the wall.
Mackintosh saw chairs as parts of an architecture. With its geometric grids, Glasgow’s version of Art Nouveau points towards Vienna and on towards modernism.
Materials: Ebonised ash; upholstered seat
Manufacture: Made in Glasgow for the publisher Walter Blackie’s house, Hill House, in Helensburgh.
The back is almost twice as tall as an ordinary chair.
The grid at the top, repeated in the house’s windows and rugs.
The black surface that hides the grain of the wood.