Book plate design for John Edwards: "The Tree of Knowledge"
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh British
Not on view
Margaret Macdonald was one of "The Four," men and women who developed an influential variant of Art Nouveau known as "The Glasgow Style." Margaret and her sister Frances met Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James Herbert MacNair at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1890s. After Margaret's 1900 marriage to Mackintosh, she woul design decorative elements central to many of his interior designs. When she drew this bookplate In 1896, Margaret was still working in partnership with Frances. The graphite design centers on the elongated form of a nude woman whose hair merges with the tendrils of a fruit-bearing tree. Printed in 1896 as a book plate for John Edwards (a patron about whom nothing is known), the admired image was also published in the "Studio" magazine in 1897 and the Austrian Secession Movement periodical "Ver Sacrum" in 1901.
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