About the Workshop
The Heart of the Rose, 1902
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh made several ‘Gesso panels’ for interiors designed by, and sometimes with, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The panels were made similarly to the method for wall frescoes: plaster was layered onto a support such as wood or canvas, then finished with piped plaster in linear relief, paint, and sometimes set with various inexpensive mixed media such as twine, shells, and embroidery beads.
The conservation of the GSA panel, The Heart of the Rose, however, has now revealed that it was created as a single plaster cast with pigment applied to the surface (rather than mixed into the plaster layers).
With a similar technique this Workshop will enable you to create a Gesso Relief Christmas Ornament.
Join our resident Gesso artist, Alison McIntosh Prentice, for a 3 hour long workshop where you will learn the art of Gesso, made famous by Margaret MacDonald McIntosh.
Booking Link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-waissal-gesso-workshop-tickets-179426558667?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
About the Workshop
The Waissal 1900 is known as the only Gesso work created by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Mackintosh noted in a letter to German art critic Hermann Muthesius;
“Just now, we are working on two large panels for the frieze… Miss Margaret Macdonald is doing one and I am doing the other. We are working them together and that makes the work very pleasant.”
This was their collaboration on the Gesso panels for the Ladies’ Luncheon Room in Miss Cranston’s tea rooms in Ingram Street Glasgow and also exhibited at the Vienna Secession. Charles constructing The Waissal and Margaret, The May Queen.
‘Wassailling’ began as a pagan fertility ceremony practiced in hope of a good crop which continued in English and European customs, generally around the Christmas holidays. Mackintosh decorated this piece with pagan symbols including an ‘all seeing eye’ and ‘mistletoe’.
Join our resident Gesso artist, Alison McIntosh Prentice, for a 3 hour long workshop where you will learn the art of Gesso, made famous by Margaret MacDonald McIntosh.
Sharing Gesso techniques and exploring the work of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh
I am running a Gesso Workshop 29th February 2020 at The Hill House Helensburgh. Book via the NTS website; https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/events/gesso-workshop