Plant Motifs in the Formation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Architectural Ornament

• Main Authors: Chen, Li-Ting, 陳俐婷
• Other Authors: Tzeng, Shai-Shu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/y35q49

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 藝術史研究所 === 105 === This study focuses on the plant motifs decorated on two most distinctive buildings – Queen’s Cross Church (1897-1899) and Scotland Street Public School (1903-1907) – designed by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928). When compared with the two construction phases of the Glasgow School of Art between 1896-1899 and 1907-1909, Queen’s Cross Church, his only ecclesiastical building, and Scotland Street Public School in Glasgow, his late complete educational commission, give a panorama of the development of Mackintosh’s architectural ornament associated with plant motifs in the 1890s and the decade after 1900. Queen’s Cross Church strongly shows his idiosyncratic details in the choice of the symbolic adaptation of plentiful plant motifs derived from his early graphics. Scotland Street Public School is a representative work used the geometric forms in architectural ornament. This study is to explore the sources of and references in Mackintosh’s training toward plant motifs in school and how Mackintosh came to form his principles of design based on those of several plant motifs. Moreover, it looks at the analysis of Mackintosh’s plant images and interpretation of his plant motifs decorated on architecture by means of tracing back plant form studies that he once used as references in his work. The subject matter in chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis discusses the two main groups of materials used in two-dimensional graphics in Mackintosh’s student life, and those used in three-dimensional architectural ornament of Queen’s Cross Church and Scotland Street Public School, respectively. The conclusion summarizes analysis findings on the development of Mackintosh’s artwork, reaffirms the connotations of plant motifs, both in religious or secular symbolism, in order to define these meanings for Mackintosh, and interprets the significance of the gradual transitional steps both in the form and thought in Mackintosh’s artwork.