I've been fortunate to have a real-live artist for a stepmom, and exceptionally fortunate that my dad tricked her into marrying him when I was fourteen, before I could completely decide that there was no place for me in the world (i.e., Georgia) and that I would never fit in anywhere. With her arrival, I found my tribe.
When the option to do a presentation about a historical figure from the Glasgow School of Art arose, I was fortunately already familiar, thanks to Carol's influence.
My team, Jake & Caitlyn, were like-minded in wanting to pass over the super-famous Rennie Mackintosh and dig deeper into the less-talked-about women: Frances and Margaret MacDonald. It's frustrating to see the "Glasgow Boys" referenced so frequently, completely ignoring the highly-influential women, but then, until recently, historians have mostly been men.
In our research, including overlap with Nick & Melody (of 5140), we stumbled on a documentary that, while surely dated, is an astounding piece of documentary film (subject matter notwithstanding). There's avant-garde classical music laid over eerie and unsettling shots of architecture as well as some rag-time showing the evolution of Mackintosh's style as the Jazz Age began to take hold in his textile work. The camera flickers and cuts between architectural elements creating an animation of sorts -- something weirdly composed of solely Mackintosh's work and yet becomes something else altogether through the filmmaker's design.
Please enjoy this video. It's not very long and I promise you'll be in to it.
Watching this made me wish that the production designers who worked on Harry Potter had pushed Hogwart's architecture a little further... it also made me shake my head over the fact that the brilliant lettering of the period is henceforth to be known as "The American Horror Story Font."
The best thing about this stuff is that when you can't decide if you like Art Nouveau or Art Deco better, you wrap yourself up in the Glasgow Four -- perfect harmony of the organic AND industrial... you also might feel connected to those dear and distant who share a love of great design. <3