292 Hill House 1
This iconic chair reflects
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s style and his fearless approach to the most
challenging manufacturing processes. Originally a furnishing accessory for one
of Mackintosh’s major design projects, Hill House in Helensburgh, near Glasgow,
Scotland, from which its name derives. The linear, geometric form is evocative
of the minimal, abstract lines of Japanese graphics, which confer symbolic and
figurative symbolic value to the piece’s striking visual impact. This piece is
seen by many critics as not only a chair but also a veritable treatise on the
way space can be articulated. The tall back is defined by a succession of
vertical lines that are topped with a grid of verticals and horizontals. Thanks
to the mastery of the furnitire makers of Meda, in the Brianza area north of
Milan, Cassina has re-issued the Hill House chair, which is available in
black-stain ashwood, with a velvet seat-cushion.
About Designer | |
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Charles Rennie Mackintosh |
Glasgow/Londra, 1868/1928 Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow in 1868
and died in London on 10th December 1928. His personality is one of those that
characterize the period immediately preceding the Modern Movement. His name is mainly connected with the design for the
Glasgow School of Art: he was the animator and most authoritative exponent of
the group known as the “Glasgow School” and he distinguished himself
principally because he recovered the most authentic values of the Scottish
idiom and of neo-Gothic taste. The group, also named “the School of Ghosts”, became
known throughout Europe – in Liege in 1895, London in 1896, Vienna in 1900,
Turin in 1902, Moscow in 1903, Budapest etc.Besides the School of Art, the most
interesting works are undoubtedly: the “Windyhill” house at Kilmacolm (1900),
the “Hill House” at Helensburgh (1902-3), the arrangement of the Derngate
house, Northampton (1916-20), and the decorative work in Miss Cranston’s
Tea-Rooms in Glasgow. Among the furnishings of his decorative interiors, it is
above all the chair – an object of special attention in the “Cassina I Maestri”
collection – which represents the focal point for coordinated spatial action.
Within it, the controlling force of the composition is
always resolved, sometimes articulated in fluent and delicate forms, at other
times in severely geometric forms. |