Triumph and Disaster

Last weekend saw my third trip to Glasgow but as I have previously hardly been out of a hotel, I decided I really needed to allow some time for sightseeing. An added impetus was the fact that I am a fan of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect and designer who heralded the beginning of the Art Deco era.

2018 is the 150th anniversary of Mackintosh's birth and there are events all over the city celebrating one of Glasgow's favourite sons. There are also huge and wonderful murals on buildings across the city such as this with the famous pink rose for which he is well known.

Glasgow is a triumph - the most imposing city with wide streets (boulevard suits them better) and grand Victorian buildings but also with beautiful modern ones by architects such as Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid which blend in seamlessly. The Grand Central Station is reminiscent of the great Railway Age and I was fortunate to stay at the equally impressive Grand Central Hotel from where John Logie Baird made the first television broadcast. The people were amongst the friendliest I have ever come across.

The disaster, of course, is the devastating fire that destroyed the Glasgow School of Art just a few days before my visit. My taxi driver from the airport was in tears talking about it. It is so central to the people of Glasgow and their culture.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of 'The Four' artists who introduced what has become known as 'the Glasgow style': the design and decorative arts produced from 1890-1920 by teachers, students and graduates of the Glasgow School of Art. This went hand in hand with the founding of the Technical Art Studios at the School of Art - made possible through a Government Act of 1890 redirecting tax on alcohol to invest in Britain's technical and manual instruction! Victorian politicians were certainly a lot more visionary than today's!

Although I could not see the School of Art, I was fortunate that there was a Charles Rennie Mackintoch exhibition at the fantastic Kelvingrove Museum

and Art Gallery. This building is a triumph and I would honestly liken it to the British Museum. I wish I'd had time to explore more but the exhibition itself was superb. Beautifully curated, informative and inspiring. I was particularly interested in the connections with the Arts and Crafts movement, whose Exhibition Society was co-founded by Walter Crane, a Victorian illustrator.

Walter Crane was a close friend of artist William Morris, a fellow socialist, who also shared his artistic views. Together with Morris, Walter Crane was a leader in the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts artistic movements. Despite his versatility as an artist and the wide range of his subject matter, Crane was always best known as a children's book illustrator. His contemporaries included fellow illustrators Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott. (http://www.waltercrane.com/. As children's illustration is one of my passions this made the exhibition even more interesting. Many of you may know that Kate Greenaway has been immortalised in the Kate Greenaway Award for Illustration awarded every year by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals - a favourite project of mine with children of all ages.

And just for fun, here are a few fascinating facts about Glasgow:

Glasgow is the 4th largest city in the UK with a Cathedral dating back to the 12th century.

Its expansion was built in the 18th century on tobacco, sugar and rum.

Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) was a Glasgow boy and worshipped at St. Andrews in the Square.

Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy) made his theatrical debut in Glasgow which has the oldest music hall in the world.

Billy Connelly is a very popular Glasgow boy and has a huge mural in the city.

John Logie Baird made the world's first TV broadcast from the Grand Central Hotel.

An oak tree was planted by suffragettes in 1918 and is known as the Suffragette Oak, sadly it was struck by lightening this year but has survived.

A wonderful city - do visit if you haven't been.