Birth Anniversary: Charles Rennie Mackintosh — June 7, 1868

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow on 7 June 1868. Architect, designer and watercolourist, he is the central figure of the Glasgow Style, the Scottish version of Art Nouveau, in dialogue with the Vienna Secession. His masterpiece is the Glasgow School of Art, where he fuses geometry and floral line into a language entirely his own — high-backed chairs, the stylised rose, interiors designed complete. He worked closely with his wife, Margaret Macdonald. The anniversary marks the designer who put Scotland on the map of European Modernism.