Tag Archive | Glasgow Rose

Arts and Crafts cicely (or is it cecily?) leaf motifs

I have quite a few pieces of silver jewellery in my Etsy shop that are inspired by British Arts and Crafts designs, most notably those of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. One of the motifs he and his contemporaries used quite a lot is known as the cicely leaf design – though I often see it written as cecily leaf.

Chalres Rennie Mackintosh design for a stencil to go on the back of a chair, 1902. It features two Glasgow Roses and several cicely leaves. From the collection of the Hunterian Museum.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh design, 1902. It features two Glasgow Roses and several cicely leaves. From the collection of the Hunterian Museum.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is a member of the umbellifer family, similar to cow parsley, Queen Anne’s lace, fennel and wild carrot.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata). Photo by H. Zell.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata).

The problem is, the fern-like, divided pinnate leaf of sweet cicely looks nothing like the leaf described as the cicely (or cecily) leaf, with its broad heart-shaped or teardrop-shaped leaf and prominent central rib! I have no idea where the name of the motif came from, but it is in very common use. Maybe it is correctly spelled cecily, and was called after a lady of that name … I’ve had a good old truffle online and I’m none the wiser.

Cicely leaf overlap ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage cecily leaf design peridot glass stud earrings. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Vintage cicely leaf sterling silver and peridot glass stud earrings. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style sterling silver ring with cecily leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photos for details.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style sterling silver ring with cicely leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photos for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Ortak brooch with three cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage jadeite and sterling silver ring with cicely leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style vintage brooch with Glasgow Rose and cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Charles Rennie Mackintosh style brooch with Glasgow Rose and cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Vintage Charles Rennie Mackintosh design pendant with figures and cicely leaf. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style necklace with cecily leaves. Made in sterling silver by Carrick Jewellery and hallmarked Edinburgh 1988. For sale: click on photos for details. (NOW SOLD).

But whatever the origins of the motif and its various names, it’s a lovely one that was commonly used.

A Charles Rennie Mackintosh Mockintosh

Apr14

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) is the most iconic of all Scottish Arts and Crafts designers. Glasgow-born and based Mackintosh was a talented architect, furniture designer, artist, and more. His works have inspired a range of replicas and items inspired by his designs, and these are fondly known as ‘Mockintoshes‘ (I’m a sucker for a bit of word play).

I recently acquired a piece of silver jewellery, a pendant, in a style that I thought was almost certainly Mackintosh, but with a motif I didn’t recognise. The pendant has two turbaned figures with what look like long capes facing each other. They are so stylised that it is easy to look at the design and not see the figures immediately.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired sterling silver pendant by Malcolm Gray of Ortak. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

I wondered what the inspiration for the piece was. Some internet truffling was in order. Luckily for me I hit pay dirt in the first place I looked: the Wikipedia page on Rennie Mackintosh:

Cabinet designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada. Photo by Tony Hisgett.

Going to the Royal Ontario Museum website, I found that the cabinet was designed by Rennie Mackintosh in 1902, and made by Francis Smith and Son in Glasgow that same year. The cabinet is in white painted oak, and the insides of the doors are lined with silver foil inlaid with a design in coloured glass of a woman holding a stylised rose in the design known as the Glasgow Rose. The Museum acquired its example in 1983-4.

More truffling showed that Mackintosh’s original design for the cabinet (accession no GLAHA 41118) is held by the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow. The Hunterian holds a huge collection of material by and related to Mackintosh. The pair of cabinets were designed for Mrs Rowat (the mother-in-law of Mackintosh’s friend and mentor, Francis Henry Newbery) for the living room of her house at 14 Kingsborough Gardens, Glasgow.

Mackintosh had a duplicate pair made for his own home in Glasgow, and this pair is now on display in ‘The Mackintosh House’ in the Hunterian Museum (accession nos GLAHA 41221 and 41222), where they can be seen flanking one of the fireplaces.

As well as featuring the Glasgow Rose, the design also features the heart-shaped leaf motif known as the ‘cicely leaf’ or ‘cecily leaf’. Both motifs were used by Mackintosh and so are often found in Mockintoshes. I’ve written a short blog post on the cicely leaf motif here.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society website.

Coming up roses

Apr3

I’ve just realised I seem to have a lot of rose jewellery in my shop at the moment. This is totally unintentional—I think I must have have a subconscious thing for the little beauties!

Grann & Laglye Skønvirke malachite and silver brooch. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

From Denmark, I have a beautiful Grann & Laglye Skønvirke malachite and silver brooch with a rose border. Skønvirke (meaning ‘beautiful work’, and which is often anglicised to Skonvirke) was a development of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements as developed in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Grann & Lagyle was founded in 1906 in Copenhagen, Denmark by Jalhannes Lauritz Grann (1885—1945) and Johannes Laglye (1878—?). The firm finally closed in 1955.

Also Scandinavian, probably from Denmark, and from the same period I have a lovely Skønvirke pendant with a rose design:

Scandinavian, probably Danish Skonvirke rose pendant and chain. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

I also have an Art Nouveau style ring with a lovely rose design, made by Chritsoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany. This design is known as the Hildesheimer Rose, and is named after the wild or dog rose (Rosa canina) that grows up the walls of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany. This famous rose is said to be over a thousand years old.

Art Nouveau style 835 silver ring by Christoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany, with a Hildesheimer Rose design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Art Nouveau style 800 silver ring by Christoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany, with a Hildesheimer Rose design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

I also have a socking great modernist silver tone metal pendant with a rose design (well, I say rose—it just as easily could be a camellia or a gardenia or similar). This takes some wearing, as it weighs almost 20 g.

Big silver tone metal rose pendant. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

And finally I also have a Malcolm Gray Ortak sterling silver and enamel brooch, with a design inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and featuring a Glasgow Rose.

Malcolm Gray Ortak sterling silver and pink enamel Glasgow Rose brooch, inspired by the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

And to go with the jewellery roses, here are a few flowery beauties that I have photographed:

Rosa ‘Madame Hardy’, in our garden, June 2006. This beautiful damask rose has a tiny green button at the centre of the white flowers.

Rosa ‘Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison’ in our garden, June 2006. The buds of this spoil very easily in the rain.

And again, in June 2007. Rosa ‘Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is a climbing bourbon rose.

Rosa ‘Constance Spry’ growing up an apple tree in my sister’s garden in Devon. This is a climbing shrub rose with gaudy pink flowers of the most gorgeous cupped shape.

and here’s a photo of the Hildersheimer Rose growing against the wall of the apse of Hildesheim Cathedral:

Arts and Crafts pewter

Jul2

Pewter is a silvery metal alloy, a favourite metal of Arts and Crafts metalworkers and jewellers. I have learned from Wikipedia that it is ‘traditionally 85—99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and sometimes, less commonly today, lead. Silver is also sometimes used.’ It tarnishes to a dullish grey, and this patinated appearance is often favoured by collectors. If desired, it can be polished to a high silvery shine.

Archibald Knox (designer): Tudric pewter vase with enamelled medallions, for Liberty & Co. Photo by charlesjsharp.

Archibald Knox (designer): Arts and Crafts ‘Tudric’ pewter vase with enamelled medallions, for Liberty & Co. Photo by charlesjsharp.

I have a few pewter objects in my Etsy shop at the moment: three date from the Arts and Crafts period, ie roughly from the 1890s into the early 1900s. and one is very modern, made in the Orkney Islands in the far north of Scotland, but based on a design similar to those of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the most famous Arts and Crafts architects and artists. Originating in the UK, the Arts and Crafts movement put great stead on traditional workmanship, on authenticity and on hand-crafted wares, and on affordable materials—all of which pewter suited perfectly, having been the main metal used for household wares for everyday people for centuries in the UK.

The first piece I listed in my Etsy shop was a shallow Arts and Crafts pewter dish with a flowing fleur-de-lys design. The upper part of the dish is in pewter and it is formed over a white metal base. It would look great as a table centrepiece filled with nuts or tangerines or big bunches of purple grapes—whatever you fancy, really.

Shallow Arts and Crafts pewter dish with fleur-de-lys decoration. For sale in my Etsy shop. (NOW SOLD).

The second is also an Arts and Crafts piece – it originally would have been a cigarette box but would serve as a lovely jewellery or trinket box today. The pewter has the hand-hammered finish that is so typical of Arts and Crafts work. It has been polished by a previous owner so has more of a silvery shine than the other pewter pieces I have.

Arts adn Crafts hammered pewter jewellery box / cigarette box / trinket box. For sale at my Etsy shop.

Arts and Crafts hand-hammered pewter jewellery box / cigarette box / trinket box. For sale at my Etsy shop. (NOW SOLD).

The third piece is also a hand-hammered item – a hip flask cunningly shaped to fit the curve of your buttock as it is carried in a back pocket. (I always think it was a bit of that insane Victorian prudery that caused it to be called a hip flask, when a bottom flask would have been a much more appropriate name!) It is marked ‘English pewter’, and originally carried 4 oz of whatever liquid you wanted to fill it with. The piece has had a life, as witnessed by the dints in the soft metal, but I think this is part of its charm. I love a piece that can tell a tale.

Hand-hammered English pewter hip flask, Arts and Crafts period. For sale in my Etsy shop. (NOW SOLD).

The last pewter piece I have is a modern brooch, in the Arts and Crafts style of famed architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It is made by the Ortak company, based in the Orkney Islands off the far north coast of Scotland.

Ortak pewter brooch, in the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and featuring a Glasgow Rose. For sale in my Etsy shop. (NOW SOLD).

It features the famous Glasgow Rose, a stylised rose flower made famous by the artists of the Glasgow School of Art, where Mackintosh trained. After going into administration last year, the Ortak company has been bought by new owners and will be relaunched, with manufacturing resuming in Orkney.

Inglenookery

West Country witterings

Tag Archive | Glasgow Rose

Arts and Crafts cicely (or is it cecily?) leaf motifs

A Charles Rennie Mackintosh Mockintosh

Coming up roses

Arts and Crafts pewter