News
What we’ve been up to
Delighted to meet John Creed and Alan Dawson today, both master blacksmiths and two of the expert makers involved in the restoration. Alan is working with large forged work with steel, making the external attachments to the façade and John is fabricating internal lamps in brass and copper. Here’s a sneak preview of one of the birds and one of the bells Alan is making for the signage on the external façade.
Our regular weekend Stencilling Stations have now finished for this year and will be restarting from February. Look out for the new dates available from early in the New Year. A big thanks to all the volunteers for their help and to everyone who came along and took part. We look forward to welcoming even more visitors next year!
We had a great afternoon visiting and working with the pupils of Glasgow Gaelic School. Everyone seemed to enjoy creating some lovely and very colourful stencils as well as learning more about Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Thanks to all the pupils and teachers for their warm welcome and enthusiasm.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald were involved in every aspect of design of the original Tea Rooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street. That includes the architectural, external and interior designs, furniture, cutlery, menus and even the waitress uniforms. This is one of our favourite photographs of two of the waitresses at the time -with thanks to the CRM Society for use of the photograph. Plus a more recent one of the students at Cardonald College, who are busy planning and designing the new waitress uniforms for when we open next summer.
Thanks to the lovely pupils and their teachers from Garnetbank Primary Aftercare Club who came along to our Stencilling Station and had a go at creating some lovely stencils. Great to see lots of focus and learning going on and Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as creating some great art!
It was nice to welcome some of the girls and boys and their teachers from St Aloysius' Junior School who visited our Stencilling Station last week. We were very impressed with their excellent stencilling and excellent behaviour! It's also great to know the students will be learning about Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Kate Cranston as part of their studies. We look forward to welcoming more students from St Aloysius and other schools in the future.
Great to read the first article from our recent German Mackintosh Press Trip guests, who visited us as part of a press visit organised by Glasgow Life. The article was written by design, architecture and lifestyle journalist Claudia Simone Hoff for Dear Magazine. Read the full article at https://www.dear-magazin.de/stories/Happy-Mackintosh!_17732521.html
We recently welcomed a small group of Textile students from Nuremburg, who came to visit along with their Student Director Barbara Denker. The students are part of an Erasmus reciprocal international exchange programme and are working with North Kelvin College on a Mackintosh event for 2018. They were interested to learn more about our plans and see what's happening currently. It's always good to hear about interesting collaborations and to be able to spread the news about Glasgow and of course Mackintosh at the Willow.
Really interesting visit to the Manufactured Joinery Workshop at Clarks Contracts to meet with their excellent joinery team who are working on some of the furniture for the restoration. It was good to see some of the samples and pieces being worked on and to see the level of care, thought, craftsmanship and expertise going into the pieces. Lots of discussion around finishes and measurements. Here's a preview of some of the pieces. We'll share more over the coming weeks and months as work progresses.
Following our successful Round 2 Grant Award, we're delighted to say we now have official Permission to Start which allows us to move on with the project and to confirm contracts for Phase 2. Celia Sinclair, Chair, signed the construction contract with Clark Contracts on Monday October 30th.
As we prepare to open in summer 2018, there are many aspects to the restoration of the building. We're now building up the project office team and are in the process of commissioning local crafts people to restore and make over 420 pieces of furniture, glass ware, wrought iron work, carpets, textiles and more.
We'll be increasing our marketing and PR activities and we're working in partnership with many prestigious organisations, for example with Dumfries House who will provide training and support for our front of house and catering staff when we open for business.
We continue to welcome the support of our funders and other partners including of course the Heritage Lottery Fund and not forgetting all the National Lottery Players whose support enables The Heritage Lottery Fund to support this and other great projects.
The Board of Trustees and Expert Mackintosh Advisory Panel continue to ensure every detail of the restoration is as it should be.
