Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Tulips

Tulips is a new tapestry created by Dovecot to celebrate Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Dovecot has chosen to interpret a Mackintosh textile design which portrays tulips through stylised floral forms.

Mackintosh’s architectural plans and modern furniture designs are celebrated internationally, yet his designs for textiles are less widely known. Throughout the 1910s, Mackintosh created hundreds of designs for textiles. He combined the geometric forms of his celebrated Glasgow Style architecture with stylised floral motifs (including tobacco flowers, roses and tulips) and abstract Jazz Age shapes such as stripes, lozenges and diamonds in geometric grids. Many of Mackintosh’s textile designs are in the collection of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and Dovecot has chosen this design to reference the importance of Mackintosh’s work to the history of Scottish art.