The Mackintosh House
The Mackintosh House is a reconstruction of the principal interiors from 78 Southpark Avenue (originally 6 Florentine Terrace), the Glasgow home of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh from 1906-1914.
After the Mackintoshes left Glasgow in 1914 the house and contents were sold to the Davidson family. The University of Glasgow later purchased the house in 1946 from the Davidsons who subsequently gifted all the original furniture.
The Mackintosh House opened as an integral part of the University’s Hunterian Art Gallery in 1981 and great care has been taken to ensure that the sequence of rooms mirrors that of the original.
Today visitors can stroll through the hall, dining room, studio-drawing room and main bedroom and marvel at Mackintosh’s distinctive - and still contemporary –style while enjoying virtually the same views and experiencing the same light as Charles and Margaret (the original house stood only some 100 metres away).
The interiors have been furnished with the Mackintoshes' own furniture - all to Mackintosh's design - and decorated as closely as possible to the original. The selection of bric à brac, fitted carpets, curtains and other soft furnishings has been based on contemporary descriptions of the house and photographs of Mackintosh interiors of the period
The Hunterian also safeguards the Mackintosh Collection, which comprises over 800 drawings, designs and watercolours as well as a small but important archive of correspondence, photographs and periodicals. The work of Mackintosh’s contemporaries and collaborators, the Macdonald sisters and Herbert McNair, is also well represented.