GLASGOW students have been recruited to help put the finishing touches to a £10 million Charles Rennie Mackintosh restoration project.
City of Glasgow College students are recreating an iconic set of Mackintosh chairs for the refurbishment of Miss Cranston’s Willow Tea Room in Scotland’s biggest city.
They have been commissioned by the Willow Tea Rooms Trust, who purchased the Sauchiehall Street building in 2014 with the aim of restoring the only surviving tea room designed in its entirety by Mackintosh.
Sandra Gunn, director of the faculty of creative industries at City of Glasgow College, said: “This is a fascinating and challenging project and we are of course delighted that our students were chosen to be part of it.
“They are doing a fantastic job, painstakingly recreating eight Mackintosh chairs which reflect their talent, commitment and craftsmanship.”
The furniture will be showcased at a public exhibition at the college’s campus from April 27 until May 4. Once the Tea Rooms re-open in June, the chairs will become a permanent feature of displays at the trust’s new interactive visitor centre on Sauchiehall Street.
Reproducing Mackintosh’s world-renowned designs is no easy feat and the complexity of each design presented the team with a unique set of challenges.
“This was a major undertaking,” Charlie McLaughlin, an HND furniture restoration student, said.
“We had no detailed drawings to work from because Mackintosh didn’t produce any. Instead we had to survey and measure existing originals which we found at the Glasgow School of Art, the Hunterian Museum and the National Museum of Scotland.”
Khi Leonard, an HND furniture craftsmanship with design student, added: “We split into smaller teams with responsibility for one chair each. We started by making the prototypes using pine or poplar before starting to work on the final pieces which we made in oak.”
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