Cutlery designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh sells for more than £175,000

Independent

17-04-2025

Silver cutlery designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been sold for £175,200, nearly six times its estimate.
The cutlery set sold on Thursday by fine art auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull consisted of a soup spoon, dessert spoon, dinner fork and dessert fork which were part of a set commissioned in 1902 by artist and embroiderer Jessie Newbery and her husband, Francis (Fra) Newbery.
Mr Newbery also commissioned the art nouveau artist and architect, whose style became famous around the world, to design the Glasgow School of Art building.
The Newberys were long-standing friends of Mackintosh and his artist wife, Margaret Macdonald.
The cutlery order was placed through Glasgow jeweller Edwards & Company, and made by David W Hislop, a skilled silversmith who had worked previously with Mackintosh.
The set was later divided between the Newberys' daughters, Mary and Elsie, with Mary's pieces sold separately between 1970 and 1980.
A watercolour painted by Mackintosh of a French village three years before he died sold at the auction for £150,200.
Lyon & Turnbull's Design Since 1860 auction included watercolours, cutlery and furniture designed by Mackintosh, who died in London in 1928 at the age of 60, a year after returning from France.
He and his wife moved to south-west France in 1923 for a cheaper lifestyle after a downturn in demand for their work but returned to London in 1927 when Mackintosh began suffering cancer symptoms.
The watercolour, titled Bouleternere and painted in 1925 with sparing use of colour to depict the hillside town, sold for £150,200, including buyer's premium, on Thursday as part of the two-day sale.
Bouleternere was previously acquired by Ronald WB Morris of Kilmacolm after a memorial exhibition of the couple's work at the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow in 1933 following Margaret's death.
Two small, early watercolours, Brookweed and Pimpernel, produced in 1901, each sold for £18,900.
A cabinet designed by Mackintosh for Scotland Street School in Glasgow in 1906 went under the hammer for £7,560.
John Mackie, head of sale and a director at Lyon & Turnbull said: 'We are, as you can imagine, absolutely delighted with the prices achieved, particularly for the exquisite Charles Rennie Mackintosh suite of cutlery.
'Mackintosh's cutlery design was revolutionary. The spoons and forks have exceptionally long, slender handles.
'The forks are particularly striking with a seamless transition between the handle and bowl creating the illusion of a single, continuous band of metal.
'It's always exciting to be on the rostrum and today's result testifies to the enduring and growing appetite for Mackintosh's pioneering and distinctive design.'