(Image: Supplied)
Arare lanterndesigned by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street Tearooms in Glasgow has sold for more than twenty times its original estimate.
Mackintosh's lantern was auctioned alongside several other works by the world-famous Scottish designer during the second day of Lyon & Turnbull's two-day-long Design Since 1860 sale, held on Thursday in Edinburgh and online.
The lantern sold for £609,850 after being expected to make around £20,000 to £30,000.
Over two days, the Design Since 1860 sale has collected £1,596,000.
Read More: Rare Christopher Dresser teapot sells for £133,600 in Edinburgh
Believed to be one of only five known complete examples still in existence, lanterns of this design can be seen in photographs from Mackintosh's time, hanging in the White Dining Room in Ingram Street, also known as the Ladies’ Luncheon Room.
The rest belong to the cultural body, Glasgow Life, and were used in the reconstruction of the White Dining Room for a travelling * Mackintosh Exhibition* organised by Glasgow Museums in 1996.
John Mackie, Head of Design mid-way through the sale, before the final £609,850 figure was achieved. Image by Lyon & Turnbull (Image: Supplied)
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A lantern, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street Tearooms in Glasgow and believed to be one of five known complete examples, sold at Lyon & Turnbull's Design Since 1860 auction for £609,850. (Image: Supplied)
Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tearooms was one of the most important social and architectural venues in Victorian and Edwardian Glasgow, and played a key role in launching the career of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Catherine "Kate" Cranston, better known as Miss Cranston, opened the tearooms at 205 Ingram Street in 1886. They were her second major venture after the success of the Crown Tea Rooms on Argyle Street.
The Ingram Street premises became especially significant because they marked the point where Charles Rennie Mackintosh moved from designing decorative elements to taking control of an entire interior scheme. Between 1900 and 1912, he carried out a series of major redesigns and extensions.
The auctionalso included Mackintosh’s striking version of a ladderback chair for Miss Cranston’s Willow Tearooms.
Expected to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000, this unique chair, made around 1903 from stained oak, fetched £82,800.
The chair is from the collection of the late Glasgow architect, Eric Sloane, who died in 2013. Mr Sloane had a lifelong interest in Glasgow and a deep interest in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Mackintosh had produced ladderback chairs previously. The most recent one prior to this one was made in 1901 for Windyhill, in Kilmacolm, Inverclyde. This house was designed by Mackintosh and furnished by him and his wife, Margaret Macdonald.
Associate Specialist, Ursula Goldsmith, with chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Image: Stewart Attwood)
Mackintosh’s folio of designs from December 1900 for German architecture and decorative arts publisher Alexander Koch's competition to design a Haus eines Kunstfreundes(* House for an Art Lover*)soldfor £6900.
Although Mackintosh's submission was incomplete when entries closed, judges recognised its originality and awarded him a special prize.
By that time Mackintosh's work had gained international attention following his exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1900. In 1999, a modified version of the House for an Art Lover design was built in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.
John Mackie, Lyon & Turnbull's Head of Design, who was at the rostrum when the Mackintosh items sold, said: "It is wonderful to see the levels of appreciation for works designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
"We are absolutely delighted with the prices achieved. The lantern is an exceptional object by one of the greatest designers this country has ever produced. One does wonder what Mackintosh would have made of it?"
The Herald reported yesterday that an angular silver-plated teapot, thought to be one of three in the world sold for a six-figure sum.
Designed in the late nineteenth century by Glasgow-born Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), the teapot sold on the first day of Lyon & Turnbull's prestigious two-day-long Design Since 1860 auction for £133,600, more than three times the estimate (£30,000 to £50,000).