Round brooch with green enamel

The Scottish architect, artist, and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh is generally credited with creating the Glasgow style of arts & crafts, which flourished between the 1890s and the 1910s. In this he collaborated with Herbert McNair and the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, all of whom met as students at the Glasgow School of Art. Frances Macdonald married Herbert McNair in 1899, and in 1900, Margaret Macdonald married Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The artistic production of this group, which called themselves “The Four,” ranged from paintings, drawings, and posters, to textiles, metalwork, jewelry, furniture, and interior design. The Macdonald sisters became especially skilled in jewelry and enameling, but unfortunately little of their jewelry survives. However, the initial R engraved on each of the present brooches appears on a certain objects made by Frances McNair, to whom this group was attributed when it was sold at Christie’s, London, in 1992. Especially characteristic of the Glasgow style are the Mackintosh-style roses enameled her in orange against green.