Learning resources at Mackintosh at the Willow

Transcript

In this session we are going to look at how innovation was the kinetic energy behind the creation of one of Glasgow's most iconic heritage buildings, and the different forms that innovation took.
As contemporary designers, artists, project managers, business leaders and collaborators, what inspiration can we take away from the way Mackintosh at the Willow -- one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's few remaining masterpieces -- came to life?

The building is the culmination of trusted partnerships between three individuals who were willing to take risks, both informing those partnerships and approaching the design brief seeing problems as opportunities for creative solutions. They could also benefit from being unshackled from conventions and ideas of the past.
Cranston was 54 when she commissioned a 28-year-old Mackintosh to design the Willow Tea Rooms building. Although he had done smaller jobs for her in her previous tea rooms, this time she handed over the reins completely. He could design the exteriors, interiors, fixtures and fittings, cutlery, even the waitresses' uniforms. He in turn collaborated with his wife Margaret Macdonald, a successful artist in her own right whose recognisable style influenced such luminaries as Gustav Klimt.

Miss Cranston was at first glance a traditional Victorian. She dressed ultra conservatively; in fact, the dress she wore in 1903 was probably from around 1860, so over 40 years out of fashion.
She was a member of the Temperance movement, believing alcohol to be the cause of myriad social problems in Glasgow, and she was a highly respectable woman of proven business skills.
That she formed a partnership with two young free-spirited rebellious artists who refuse to conform to the conventions of the day perhaps makes us reconsider that first impression of her. It is conceivable the very fact she was a successful business woman in an era when that was unheard of, that she struck out on her own, amassing her own income, marrying late in life for love rather than good social standing, keeping her maiden name and always looking to find ways to improve the lives of the less fortunate around her gives us a clue- to why she saw the value in another outsider like Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Perhaps in him she found a like-minded soul, a like-minded rebel.

Glasgow at the turn of the century was a growing city with buildings of many different styles appearing on the streets, left, right and centre.
The traditional Victorian model of architecture was to draw inspiration from the past -- to revive a tried and tested style.
Therefore if you were to glance around the city, you might see a little bit of Ancient Greece or a homage to Rome, to the medieval gothic, even to france of long ago.
Mackintosh had little time for this backward-looking approach. He wanted to explore something we might call the Scottish vernacular, which drew from Scotland's own heritage, and prioritise materials and shapes better suited to what you wanted the building to be and to do.
When it came down to that latter criteria, the function of the building, he was going to need to look much further afield than the Europe of hundreds of years ago.
Turn-of-the-century Glasgow was very different to the Glasgow we know today. Buildings were covered in a layer of dirt from hundreds of factory chimneys pumping out pollution, and smog was ever present, making it hard to see where you were going.
Conditions were not conducive to good physical or mental health. In fact, the term smog was invented in part directly to describe Glasgow's air pollution being a mixture of smoke and fog.

Unusually, Mackintosh turned to the cheap modern material concrete render used in ancient times but recently rediscovered and improved to create a clean white facade in contrast to the dirty brown and black of the neighboring buildings.
He set back the entrance so that someone entering would feel they were moving from one kind of space -- dirty noisy Sauchiehall Street -- into a completely different one.
He removed and shunned all the garnish of heavy Victorian window ledges, fanciful flourishes etc.
Ornament was inspired by nature not the past. You'd spot no cherubs, grecian figures or urns on a Mackintosh building.

It is hard to overstate how shocked the Glaswegians of 1903 probably were when the cladding finally came off and they saw what was waiting for them.
Underneath, Mackintosh and Macdonald embraced a holistic design concept. The total artwork in German this was called gazampt quinstwork -- every space and feature within the building was going to contribute to the total effect, one of harmony and peace, of beauty and function.
Such a thing is usually impossible when different elements such as furniture, light fittings and wallpaper are chosen by a group of people with different ideas, but here Charles and Margaret would decide on everything except the crockery.
The result would be a continuous flow throughout the building of one overall theme.

For over a hundred years, Japan had remained a mystery to the outside world. Its trading routes were non-existent, its borders closed to visitors. But with the change in dynasty, Japanese goods and artwork started to appear, thanks in part to the influence of the River Clyde.
Mackintosh embraced the radically different philosophy of this non-western culture. Gone were ideas of impressing upon visitors how much wealth you possessed, how ornate and expensive your objects were. What mattered was the space itself and the feelings it evoked, the psychological effect.
What mattered was peace and harmony, the natural world, the opportunity for light and sound and even empty space to evoke a sense of calm.
Nowadays we describe these ideas variously as zen or wabi-sabi, but in 1903 to make them a central tenet of a Glasgow tea room was unheard of.
Fused with the Japanese influence, Mackintosh and Macdonald looked to European art nouveau to incorporate the natural shapes and modern approaches to materials as the industrial age steamed ahead.
It was easy to forget the fear it invoked in many people -- thundering steam trains underground, terrifying machines churning up the land.
In Paris, the soothing art nouveau curves of the metro station entrances, weaving leaves and plant forms out of metal, helped people feel less threatened by the technology transforming their lives.
And Glasgow Mackintosh embraced this, ensuring the tea room came across as a modern sanctuary.

Let's take a specific example and look at Mackintosh's innovative approach to light.
The darkness of the rear tea room being a problem he needed to solve creatively if Miss Cranston was to be able to make use of the whole building.
Around that time most establishments used gas lamps and we think only about 3% of the city had electricity yet Mackintosh installed it.
It was modern,it was aesthetically pleasing. The glow from the tungsten light bulbs were a tourist attraction in their own right and it allowed him to literally shine a light on both Margaret's incredibly evocative art nouveau stencil work thanks to using aluminium dust rather than silver paint, and the carefully crafted stained glass in the fireplaces and mirrors on the walls.
In the leaded mullion glass of the main windows, Mackintosh drew inspiration from Scotland itself. These were the windows of baronial castles: local, familiar, suited to Scottish weather and northern hemisphere light.
Inside the building stained glass panels and whole decorative door reaffirmed the commitment to light artistry and mood lifting spaces.

Nowhere do we see the radical approach to design as being able to whisk us away from our lives more so than in the much celebrated Salon de Luxe.
With this special room, Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald managed to give Miss Cranston exactly what she had wanted: a space entirely for women that treated them not as second-class citizens who needed male chaperones and who must negotiate public spaces designed with men in mind, but as individuals and members of a sisterhood in their own right.
Macdonald paid homage to the suffragette movement by choosing a colour palette of purple and green and white.
Mackintosh designed chairs like thrones positioned under glorious chandeliers that captured and dispersed the light from the large bow window at the front and the stained glass on the walls.
The symbolism of the willow tree, which gave the building its name, here more than anywhere else was celebrated -- a tree steeped in the feminine with its draping forms and associations with water and love in which Margaret Macdonald captured in her incredible gesso artwork, O ye, all ye who walk in willowwood.
By creating such a space for women and by women, since the majority of the room is probably thanks to Margaret, here was an innovative challenge to who public spaces were for and what they should look like.
To enter the Salon de Luxe was to enter a fairy tale where you were treated like royalty and surrounded by beauty, even though half an hour ago you may have just been a middle-class lady clutching the bar on the tram as it rattled down the noisy and dirty Sauchiehall Street.
The space transformed you just for a wee while, let you step outside yourself and become something else and as such it was restorative, humanising and dignified.

Mackintosh also designed a room for the gentleman called the Billiard Room.
This originally contained a billiard table and booths where the city's men could come and have lunch and discuss work without having to make do with the alcohol-centred environment of pubs, which offered meagre lunch options.
At Miss Cranston's, everything was freshly made in the kitchens, with herbs and vegetables provided in part from her own garden in Nitshill.
Nevertheless even today, we regard the billiard room as a remarkable space considering it was designed for male clientele.
The walls are purple and stencilled with pink squares; the woodwork curves around the benches and doors; and the mullion glass contains bright blue lozenges of stained glass that confirmed that this too is an artistic space that doesn't care for the rules of what masculine spaces should be like.
For many visitors in the 21st century, as much as the Salon de Luxe astounds them, it is the billiard room that evokes in them a sense of calm, pleasure and admiration.

What then can we take away from this innovative approach?
Without a doubt Mackintosh at the Willow would not exist had three individuals not embraced unexpected partnerships, trusted in each other, pushed the boundaries not simply to be contrary but because their convictions told them to, and most importantly thought carefully about who the building was for and placed that individual visitor at the heart of the process.
Although nowadays the building is famous and held up as a masterpiece, in 1903 Miss Cranston perhaps just wanted a place that people would feel comfortable and delighted coming to, and Mackintosh and Macdonald wanted to create artistry that was honest and authentic and in its own small way lifted spirits as a coder.
Seeing the photographs here of Charles and Margaret having fun with their friends out in the countryside, and Miss Cranston in all her Victorian finery enjoying the company of her pet donkey Penelope.
Perhaps it's worth remembering and celebrating that all three were at one time charged with being a wee bit eccentric, and good for them.

Transcript

Hello! We are here at Mackintosh at the Willow with Oliver Braid, the Creative Learning Manager at Willow Tea Rooms Trust, that owns Mackintosh in the Willow, and we're going to be looking at afternoon tea - what it means, what it's about, its special history in Glasgow, and the contest we're going to be offering to students to design their own.
So without further ado, we'll get started. Oliver! Hello! Welcome!

Thank you very much.

One of the things that people from anywhere outside the UK would think is "afternoon tea" is obviously a cup of tea you drink in the afternoon, but that's not really the case here, is it? There's so many other things British people mean by "tea".

Yeah. So since the Victorian period, since the mid-1800s, we've had something called the afternoon tea, and we've got an example of the afternoon tea here. It's served all across Britain, but here at the Willow Tea Rooms, we serve it every day.
We've got a normal tea, which would just be like a cup of tea, and then we've got "afternoon tea", which normally will be tea served with maybe some savouries and some scones and some cakes.

And people in Scotland still also refer to their dinner in the evening as their "tea".

Yeah, and in England, where I'm from, as well we also say, "What are you having for your tea tonight?" And so in that context, "tea" means "dinner". That's the main meal, so it definitely doesn't just mean a cup of tea.

Great, thank you! So, we have here an example of a Mackintosh at the Willow afternoon tea for one, with lots of treats. Can you talk us through what we've got here?

Sure! At Mackintosh at the Willow, we change our afternoon teas quite a lot. We used to do a variety where we would present either a classic or a themed tea, or a seasonal tea. Today what we've got is a kind of classic afternoon tea, with some additional extras. Ok.
Traditionally, the first layer is always savoury snacks and this comes from the original - again, the Victorian invention, where the Duchess of Bedford was credited with inventing the afternoon tea. She would order to her room a plate of bread and butter, a plate of cake and a cup of tea. So developing on that, we've got the savoury layer.
Today we have sandwiches, and we have sausage rolls. But I've got the menu here as well so I'll just talk us through it.
We've got the pastrami, pickle and English mustard on a pretzel bun. (Wow!)
We've got the west coast of Scotland salmon, with a lemon and dill cream cheese.
We've got smoked applewood and tomato chutney - so that's actually like a vegan inclusion.
And then we've got the egg mayo and rocket, inside a little - or a petit - croissant.
And then we've got these warm savouries as well in our afternoon tea. You actually get an extra plate, which is really special.
And on here, we have this classic Scottish haggis bonbon.
And then we have the traditional Scottish roll. So that's our savoury layer.And so I think normally people would eat that layer first.
And then we've got this mid layer, and it's quite interesting.
We've got two different types of sweet things here,so I'm just going to move this jam, and you'll see that we've got a shortbread biscuit and we've got a scone.
We've got two scones. And the scones come with the jam and with the clotted cream.
Original Victorian afternoon teas, when they developed, were served with biscuits.

Right.

And then, as the railway improved and as refrigeration improved, we were able to bring scones onto the afternoon tea menu, so this is more of an Edwardian addition, so early 1900s.
Scones with cream and scones with cream and jam had been served separately in the south of Britain in Devon and Cornwall, as what was known as a "cream tea".
And in late Victorian times lots of people, as you probably know, were going to the seaside.
Holidays became a big thing, and they were going to these southern parts of Britain and having scones served with jam and cream.
They bring that back, and then soon it becomes added onto the menu.
I'm sure probably most people watching know what jam is, they'll know what a biscuit is.
I'm assuming people will know what a scone is. It's like a slightly sweet but very dense bun, and we'll cut it open in a little bit so that people can see.
And then clotted cream ... this is why the improvement of refrigeration was important, because it's made particularly in Devon and Cornwall normally.
It's a very, very thick cream. Often it will come with a crust on the top of it, so it's almost nutty, and it's very, very thick.
And again we'll have a look at that and how to put that on.
Depending on whether you're from Devon or Cornwall, or whether you go, there is a debate about whether you put the cream on the scone first or whether you put the jam on first.

And then finally on the top here we've got a selection of luxury mini cakes. This is a staple for the afternoon tea, and again at Mackintosh at the Willow, we change our cakes quite regularly.
These ones today off the menu, we have got the lemon macaron with a raspberry and white chocolate ganache.

Beautiful! - just here, lovely colours.

Then we've got the salted caramel brownie entremet.
Then we've got the carrot cake which is topped with crystallized ginger and then we've got this lovely little caramel and banana tart just there.

Beautiful! So you've got a three-course meal all in one package, and it had better be a luxurious thing that you have occasionally because it's a lot of food!

Yeah, this is a lot of food. I suppose quite often it nowadays is more of a special treat.
We talked about the Duchess of Bedford. I think she went through a big stage of having it every day to cheer her up during this bleak afternoon time between meals.

Yeah, nowadays we find that people treat it much more as a sort of special occasion.

Beautiful, thank you! So, you said afternoon tea is one of the big things people buy here, but afternoon tea is just really a big thing in Glasgow at the moment generally. What do you think has made it so popular?

I think that people have had a hard couple of years, and they're looking for something that is a bit of a special treat, and people want to come out and relax again.
And then also, I think, in general, we're aware that people now live their lives slightly based on what they can photograph and what they can put on social media, particularly Instagram.
So we do get people who come in and maybe after their tea's served, they won't touch anything for a long time because they're actually photographing themselves with the tea.
So the presentation is really important both for us and for the people who are purchasing the product.
And I touched on earlier, I guess, we have this added attraction at Mackintosh at the Willow with our afternoon teas, in that they change on a rotation.
We've got this real classic example here. We used to do some very special themes.
We've done a Wizard of Oz theme and Alice in Wonderland theme. So, again, really playing into the Instagram-able nature of that kind of food.
And these were particularly popular just after lockdown, when people were coming out. They were looking for something really exciting,and particularly something for the family, so just fun afternoon tea themes really bring that in.
Our more traditional look or the classic afternoon tea, this is more popular with older people, and particularly older locals who remember going for an afternoon tea when they were young in Glasgow.
Some people who come here can still remember coming to these tea rooms to have a traditional afternoon tea, so it's like a walk down memory lane.
And then more recently we've been doing a combination of the themed tea and the classic, in the shape of a seasonal tea.
This is classic but with a theme rolled into it, and that also brings back repeat customers, particularly international audiences as well.
Often when they come, they really want more of a classic feeling of an afternoon tea, yeah.

And with all these different types of teas you guys have tried out, are there any lessons you've learned- that would be useful for people designing their own afternoon tea?

I think we have found that the themed teas - so, I love them because they look really fun, the cakes are really special - but they actually aren't as popular as a classic or a seasonal, so I think going forward what we're looking at doing is more of a rotation between the classic and the seasonal and less of the fun theme.
Although I would still be really open seeing if somebody wanted to design a really fun themed afternoon tea.
I think there's still a lot of space for imagination.
I think, in general, because there's so many courses and it's quite a visual sensory thing, I think for chefs and for people producing food, this is a dream situation, because you can experiment with the look and the palette across savoury and sweet option.

Lots of scope for creativity and tastiness, and for people to experiment!

Yeah, definitely.

Great! Thank you so much! So we've talked about how Kate Cranston developed this space in her businesses but here we are,mu ch later, and we've got Willow Tea Rooms Trust that you work for and Mackintosh at the Willow that we're sitting in.
Can you tell us about those organizations and what they do?

Sure. So, as you said rightly, this building first opened 120 years ago, in 1903. It was the last of Kate Cranston's tea rooms.
Then she actually sold it in 1919. It became a restaurant, and it became a department store.
In the mid-1980s, it was empty, and then taken over again by a jewellery business,which ran here until about 2013, and then the business closed completely.
So in 2014 a businesswoman from the city, Celia Sinclair, who was a Mackintosh fan, saw that this building was empty and she purchased the entire building to stop the original Mackintosh work from being distributed into private collections.
She saved this building for the city.
And then between 2014 and 2018, she worked with artists and designers and academics from the university to recreate the tea rooms to look identical to how they looked when it first opened in 1903.
Celia formed a trust - the Willow Tea Rooms Trust - and I work for the trust.
And part of the trust, or an arm of the trust, is a social enterprise based in the tea rooms, which is now called Mackintosh at the Willow.
And so we run the entire building as a tea rooms.
There's also an education department, which is what I run.
There are hireable spaces, and we have a shop, and we have a visitor centre with a museum all about the history of Kate Cranston, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the history of tea in Glasgow.
Yeah, and I think we can do about 200 covers at a time in the space, so really busy. And a lot of our biggest trade is people coming for the afternoon tea.

Lovely! So we just want to thank Oliver for sharing all this wonderful knowledge with us, and thank the kitchen for producing this amazing afternoon tea that we're going to test out, and the whole Mackintosh at the Willow and Willow Tea Rooms Trust for sharing this with us.

Sabrina, thanks for coming. Thanks for offering us the opportunity to show our afternoon tea, and I think there's a competition for students. Maybe you can introduce for us now.

Yes! So for students who would like to use the inspiration we hope you've just had. For cooking students or bakery students, we would love to get your take on what afternoon tea could be. As we've discussed, there's loads of scope for creativity.
You would just need to provide the three different courses, give us your recipes and pictures. And for hospitality service students, you could design how you're going to present and deliver it.
It could even be an event that you're designing it around.
And for tourism or marketing, even ambitious English students, you can produce a video of up to five minutes talking about afternoon tea to promote it to an international audience and we'll give you details separately of how to submit that.
And the successful winners will get a caddy of special tea and also feature on the Willow Tea Rooms Trust social media.

Thanks for that and good luck!