MX.06 Interiors for 14 Kingsborough Gardens

Mackintosh designed white-painted fitted and free-standing furniture and stencilled wall decoration for the drawing room at 14 Kingsborough Gardens for shipowner Robert James Rowat – cousin of the designer and Art School teacher, Jessie Newbery – and his wife Jenny. He also designed a dark-stained settle for the entrance hall, and stencilled wall decoration for the second-floor bedroom of the clients' eleven year-old daughter, Maud. 1 The furniture included a remodelled fireplace with carved mantelpiece and square purple glass inlays; fitted corner seating upholstered in grey linen with green and white stencilled decoration; two upholstered armchairs; an oval table and two free-standing cabinets. The wall decoration was stencilled in grey, pink and green. 2

It appears the work was carried out shortly after the Rowats acqured the house. In the 1901 census, taken on 31 March, the family are registered at 4 Belhaven Terrace; by May, the publication date of the 1901–2 Glasgow Post Office Directory, Robert Rowat's home address is given as 14 Kingsborough Gardens. 3

The work must have been a private commission as no related entries appear in John Honeyman & Keppie's job books or cash book. The commission may therefore have been agreed before the end of 1901, when Mackintosh was taken into partnership and restrictions on private work were introduced. The work continued into the period of the new partnership: a drawing for the cabinets by Mackintosh is dated 1902; a payment of £40 0s 0d from 'Mrs Rowat', recorded in the cash book on 10 May 1905, may relate to this project. 4

Mackintosh carried out work for other members of the Rowat family: for Robert Rowat's mother, Margaret, at Warriston, Paisley; his sister Isabella Wylie Hill, at 3 Lilybank Gardens; and his cousin, Edith Rowat, at Prospect Hill House, Paisley. Early in his career Mackintosh also worked on the business premises of R. Wylie Hill & Co, the firm of Isabella's husband, Robert. 5

A report on the condition of 14 Kingsborough Gardens was produced as part of the Mackintosh Buildings Survey, led by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society and carried out between 2015 and 2016. 6

Authorship: The work is known from surviving drawings by Mackintosh. Photographs were published under Mackintosh's name in Dekorative Kunst in March 1902, and in Hermann Muthesius's seminal publication, Das englische Haus. The free-standing furniture was included in the later publication. 7
Versions of the armchairs, oval table and cabinets were exhibited at Moscow in winter 1902–3 under Mackintosh's name; related chairs, with stencilled rather than upholstered backs, and an oval table were exhibited in Turin in Spring 1902. 8