1 Talented artist, skilled designer and one-half of early 20th century art’s most famous power couple, Margaret Macdonald remains a bit of a mystery as history has tended to focus on her husband, the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. We may never know just how much of an influence she was on Mackintosh’s work but there are some clues. A letter by Mackintosh to his wife sent from France in 1927, for example, said: “You must remember that in all my architectural efforts you have been half if not three quarters of them.”

2 Although born near Wolverhampton in England in 1864, Margaret made Glasgow her home in the late 1880s when she and her sister Frances enrolled at Glasgow School of Art. She is one of the key figures associated with the emergence of the ‘Glasgow Style’.

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3 In Glasgow, Margaret and Frances worked from a studio on Hope Street. Margaret was an extremely talented artist, skilled in a variety of media such as watercolour, metalwork, embroidery and textiles and she became celebrated as one of the best young artists of early 20th century Britain. Along with several other successful and inspirational female artists, Margaret became part of the Glasgow Girls, who worked in many media from suffragette banners to jewellery and paintings.

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4 Margaret and Charles married in 1900. They worked together on a series of interiors, including the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park and the Room de Luxe at the original Willow Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street. Mackintosh once said: “Margaret has genius. I only have talent.”

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5 Her most famous works include The May Queen, which was made for Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street Tearooms, and Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood, which formed part of the decorative scheme for the Room de Luxe in the Willow Tearooms. Margaret died in 1933.