Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings & Interior Designs
by Roger Billcliffe

This new and completely revised fourth edition of Roger Billcliffe’s ground-breaking catalogue raisonné of the furniture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh appears thirty years after the book's first publication and more than twenty years since it was last in print. The text has been updated throughout to take account of the numerous discoveries and developments in Mackintosh scholarship. Newly discovered pieces are described and illustrated, and many items that were previously shown in black and white appear in colour, so that there are now over 900 illustrations including over 250 in colour.

For Mackintosh, who saw architecture as the art that encompassed all the other visual arts, the design of furniture and interiors formed a vital part of his oeuvre. The exhibition rooms, interiors and even single pieces of furniture, which were so eagerly sought after by his European clients and colleagues, were designed with the same care as his major architectural commissions. In a working life of only twenty-five years, Mackintosh designed over 300 pieces of furniture, a number that seems all the more impressive given that the majority were produced in the periods 1897-1905 and 1916-1918.

After an introduction in which Billcliffe perceptively analyses Mackintosh’s career and scholarly interpretations of it, the book is arranged as a complete chronological catalogue of his work as a furniture designer. Mackintosh’s standing as one of the key figures in design at the beginning of the 20th century and the role of Margaret Macdonald – recently elevated by some writers to the position of collaborator and co-designer of several projects – is thoroughly examined and brought up to date.

As well as the entries on individual designs and pieces, the catalogue includes essays on all Mackintosh’s major commissions for interiors and on his designs in general at specific periods of his career. Contemporary photographs are used extensively to show interiors (many of them now destroyed) as they were at the time of their completion. Pieces of furniture which cannot be traced are listed by reference to the job books that record the details of designs by Mackintosh or the firms of which he was a member.

This is the only comprehensive work on the furniture of the most important British designer and architect since Robert Adam. An impressive and stimulating work of scholarship, this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in twentieth-century design, whether in historical, aesthetic or purely practical terms.

It is acknowledged as the definitive work on a designer of world renown and influence.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings And Interior Designs by Roger Billcliffe, is published by Cameron & Hollis, £120

Review from Herald Scotland
The man who saved Mackintosh: Roger Billcliffe
by Rosemary Goring

30th August 2010

Link to the article on-line

The Glasgow Boys' Republished
Roger Billcliffe's award-winning The Glasgow Boys', first published in 1985 has just been republished by Frances Lincoln of London.

The text has been revised to bring it up to date but the major change is the complete re-design, allowing the use of colour where possible.

Over 150 extra colour illustrations have been included (in a total of 285 illustrations), adding both to the understanding of the story of the Glasgow Boys and giving immense pleasure in the continuing use of the book.

Review from The Sunday Times
November 9, 2008

The Glasgow Boys Find Fame Again
It’s time to re-examine the legacy of a key group of Scottish artists as a travelling exhibition of their work is planned.

Back in ’85, a group of Glasgow artists caused a sensation with their first group exhibition. The opening night was the social event of the year, the critics were beside themselves and everyone agreed: these painters were the coming thing.

That would be 1885, and it was James Guthrie, John Lavery, Arthur Melville and E A Hornel’s daring take on perspective, bold use of colour and refusal to stay in their studios painting stags that had the art world in such a lather. Although the Glasgow Boys, as they later became known, knew each other and had been painting together for a few years, it took this show to turn them into a phenomenon.

“They arrived with a bang,” says Roger Billcliffe, the art historian who has single-handedly recorded and protected the group’s reputation. His 1985 book, The Glasgow Boys, has now been expanded and reprinted. “And then, almost as soon as they had arrived, they disappeared again.”

Their reappearance has been slow and patchy, but in 2010, a key exhibition should finally put them up where they belong. Billcliffe’s book has been reissued in a larger format, with lavish colour reproductions, for the run-up to the show, which will start at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow before moving to London’s Royal Academy.

This will, says Billcliffe, confirm the Boys’ contribution to late 19th-century painting, the ground they broke and the younger artists they inspired. “It will be a revelation. People will have seen a lot of these pictures in reproduction but not in the flesh. I think it will firmly cement them into the niche they are in.”

It has taken the Scottish establishment longer to recognise the legacy of the Glasgow Boys’ work. Kelvingrove has a strong collection but it could have been stronger.

In 1962 Playmates by Henry came up for auction. The curator of paintings wanted to buy it but had a budget of only £60. A Norwegian dealer outbid him with £62. Earlier this year, the painting reappeared, selling for £400,000.

Besides charming us with images of girls herding ducks and clouds scudding across Ayrshire skies, do the Boys have anything else to contribute to the 21st century? Billcliffe laughs. “You should stick by your guns. There’s no harm in wanting to be successful, but you can see what happens when you sell yourself out. Money can be a powerful factor in taking the sharp edge off your art.”

The Glasgow Boys by Roger Billcliffe is published by Frances Lincoln, £40.

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