Wooden panels, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Ingram Street Tea Rooms, 1900

These wooden panels, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), formed part of a partition screen for the Ladies' Luncheon Room at the Ingram Street Tearooms from 1900.

The Luncheon Room’s stained glass entrance screen and high-hung decorative wall panel appeared in a different form in his front salon for the Willow Tearooms in 1903. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was the only designer for Miss Cranston’s tearooms from 1900. He gained creative freedom to experiment, while Miss Cranston gained stunning, modern designs that were good for business. One of Mackintosh’s first solo designs was the Ladies’ Luncheon Room in the Ingram Street tearooms. To reflect cool northerly ligh around the room Mackintosh painted it white and added vertical stripes of shimmering aluminium leaf to the walls. The large painted gesso plaster panels and stained glass added splashes of warm colour to the tearoom.