The Mackintosh Collection
The Mackintosh Collection, based on the architect’s estate, is the largest single holding of his work. It comprises over 800 drawings, designs and watercolours, featuring all aspects of Mackintosh’s output, together with an important group of furniture and decorative art and a small but important archive of correspondence, photographs and periodicals.
The work of Mackintosh’s contemporaries and collaborators, Margaret and Frances Macdonald and James Herbert MacNair, is also well represented. Appointments to view reserve material may be made by writing to the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ.
The Hunterian Art Gallery is also home to The Mackintosh House, the reassembled interiors of Mackintosh's Glasgow home.
Browse our online catalogue for Mackintosh.
Since 1971, the University has had a long-standing relationship with Cassina of Milan to reintroduce Mackintosh's iconic furniture. To view the 'I Maestri' collection, visit the Cassina website.
Mackintosh Sketchbooks Project
Sketching was a lifelong preoccupation for Mackintosh, as professional tool and leisure activity. Twelve sketchbooks survive of which six are in The Hunterian collection. These have been conserved, digitised, catalogued and made available on-line for the first time with the support of a grant from Museums Galleries Scotland.
The earliest sketchbook contains student studies of building construction details from around 1888. The four travel sketchbooks document Mackintosh's trips through Scotland to Ayrshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire, and in England, to Devon, East Anglia, Gloucestershire, Kent, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Sussex. These contain drawings of historic and vernacular buildings, architectural details, and exquisite botanical studies. The last notebook records site visits, including refurbishments at The Hill House, late architectural projects in Scotland, and some minor works in London. In all, nearly 300 pages of drawings are now available to be explored.