A Stroll Down Buchanan Street

Night or day people throng Buchanan, the city’s main pedestrian shopping street. At one end sits the Royal Concert Hall, atop steep steps offering a long view all the way to the River Clyde. The posh House of Fraser department store takes up considerable real estate, with windows hawking Prada and Hermes. British stores like All Saints Spittalfields, Top Shop, and FatFace (whoever thought that was a good name for a hipster boutique?) compete with too many US interlopers: Urban Outfitters, North Face, and Apple. If you want a bespoke kilt with all the accessories, this is the place to go. It’s also where beggars and buskers ply their trade, including the inevitable pipers. The grizzled-looking Clanadonians (whose motto is “keeping it tribal”) are always able to draw a crowd with their booming drumbeats and blaring bagpipes. 

A Typical February Scottish Sky

William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and a Stirling Adventure

                                                       William Wallace Monument                                                                                                       Robert the Bruce

Equidistant between Glasgow and Edinburgh, Stirling looms large in Scottish history. The saying “to take Stirling is to hold Scotland” pays homage to the battles for independence from the English that were fought here in the 1200–1300’s by two iconic figures, William Wallace (aka Braveheart) and Robert the Bruce. Stepping off the train after a 40-minute journey, we’re plunged back through the centuries as we make our way past winding cobbled streets and impressively preserved grey granite buildings lining the uphill climb to the formidable Stirling Castle. The castle was home to a line of Stewart kings and the place where Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned at the tender age of 9 months. It’s a sprawling complex, once housing 800 soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars. You can imagine the celebrations hosted in the Great Hall, whose timbered ceiling is crafted from 350 trees, and the intrigues that must have played out behind the intricately carved stone façade of the royal apartments. (Not all was politics and fighting, though: at the quirky Stirling Smith Museum we saw a perfectly preserved leather and pig’s bladder football that dates from the 1540s, discovered in the castle’s ceiling). Perhaps the best part of traveling here is the broad sweep of countryside visible from this high perch, where you can see the distant monument to William Wallace and all the way to the Firth of Forth.

                                           Stirling Castle                                                                                  Pretenders to the Throne                  Stirling Village  

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh...She Had Genius

The White Rose & the Red Rose,1902       Margaret Macdonald       CRM & MMM Watercolor       The Opera of the Sea, 1902 

“Margaret has genius, I have only talent”…so stated Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh was the collaborator and wife of C. R. Mackintosh. After meeting CRM at the Glasgow School of Art, she became a true aesthetic partner as both collaborated on graphics, interiors, textiles and artworks, and even signed many watercolors jointly. The jointly developed flowing lines and floral motifs helped define the Glasgow Style. MMM’s best known works include gesso panels, wherein textures and lines were piped onto the canvas via pastry bags, with jeweled insets. The largest, The Wassail (1900) was completed for the Willow Tea Room. She and CRM exhibited works at the 1900 Vienna Secession, and influenced the furniture work of Josep Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt’s 1902 Beethoven Frieze. In 2008 her 1902 work The White Rose and the Red Rose was auctioned for 1.7 million UK pounds, then a record for a Scottish artwork.

The Wassail, 1900; completed w/C.R. Mackintosh

The Riverfront - Getting There Is the Hard Part

Like Portland, Glasgow’s city center is bisected by a working river. It used to be said that “the Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde,” but the mighty shipbuilding industry never recovered from the Great Depression–even with some renewed activity during World War II. Today, only one shipbuilder remains and the city is in the midst of a decade-long effort to convert vast swaths of empty waterfront property into business and residential hubs.

 

One part of the redevelopment is the Riverside Museum of Transportation, a cavernous building designed by Zaha Hadid and named the European museum of the year in 2013. It’s crammed full of examples of just about every 19th to 21st century human conveyance, from horse-drawn carriages to early automobiles to prams, locomotives, model ships, and skateboards. The world’s oldest pedal-powered bicycle is on display along with more modern bikes and cycles that are notable for their owners’ journeys (like Ewan McGregor’s BMW featured in the documentary series “The Long Way Round”). World War I wheelchairs made of wood and leather to look like parlor furniture are a reminder that those confined to them weren’t expected to leave the house, though a 1970s, three-wheeled “invalid car” shows how attitudes about mobility changed. One thing that hasn’t undergone much of a transformation: Glasgow’s subway system. A 1900 rail car looks like it would be very much at home as part of the “Clockwork Orange,” today’s inner city transit system that runs two short circular lines that continually go either clockwise and counterclockwise, taking you from one side of the city to another in about 12 minutes). With massive apartment towers, the Norman Foster-designed convention center (called The Armadillo), and the new BBC Scotland headquarters, the city hopes to breathe life into the banks of the Clyde again. 

The Underappreciated Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Portrait                                  Bedroom, Hill House                                         Hill House                                      

A condensed entry about Charles Rennie Mackintosh leaves out so much. Glasgow is filled with impressive older structures, but the works of Mackintosh lay claim to its heart. Born in Glasgow in 1868, he worked here almost exclusively for over 20 years. Mackintosh trained as an architect in a local practice and studied art and design at evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. There Mackintosh and his friend Herbert MacNair met fellow art students (and sisters) Margaret and Frances Macdonald. The inseparable foursome collaborated on illustrations and designs for buildings, furniture, and metalwork, developing a highly distinctive style with abstracted female figures and metamorphic lines. These works came to be known as the Glasgow Style and were much admired in Europe (including by figures such as Gustav Klimt, who interpreted the style and gained much more fame).

House for an Art Lover                       Graphic Design                                   Furniture                                Watercolor       

Throughout his career, Charles relied on a handful of clients and patrons, given his preferences for total design. Despite local successes, like his masterpiece the Glasgow School of Art and Willow Tea Rooms, Mackintosh's work met with eventual indifference at home and his career in Glasgow declined. By 1914 he despaired of ever receiving true recognition in Glasgow and he and Margaret (now his wife) moved, temporarily, to the Suffolk Coastline, where he painted delicate flower studies in watercolor. In 1915 they settled in London and for the next few years Mackintosh attempted to resume practice as an architect and designer. In 1923 the Mackintoshes left London for the South of France where he gave up all thoughts of architecture and design and devoted himself entirely to painting landscapes. He died in London, in December 1928. In recent decades Glasgow and the rest of the world finally recognized his and Margaret’s genius and their works command millions at auction today. 

                            Willow Tea Room, Sauchiehall Street                                          House for an Art Lover             

On the Bonnie, Bonnie Banks

A rare sunny (but still frosty) Sunday and we were lucky enough to be invited on an excursion to the countryside by the Scottish cousins of our Portland friends Marc and Susan. With Tam as our guide, we attempted a steady uphill climb in Queen’s Wood but had to turn back because the trail was too icy (and Rhonda’s boots had too little traction). Instead, we took a drive round Loch Lomond, which was hardly a consolation prize. Britain’s largest body of fresh water, Loch Lomond is surprisingly close to Glasgow (about a 20-minute drive) yet a world away. It’s surrounded by oak and pine forestland (the Trossachs National Park) and boasts 21 “Munros” (mountains over 3,000 feet). Half of Scotland’s population lives within an hour’s drive of the park. Even with the sunshine, there weren’t too many people hiking along the shoreline or stopping for tea in the cafes near the boat launches (nor were there many boats). Spring and summer will likely be a different story, with tourists and residents alike thronging the ferries and boats that ply the loch and travel to the many islands within it.  (For fun - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feLT7Btuqpc - but the song is actually quite sad)