Mackintosh, Bassett-Lowke house, Northampton, United Kingdom, 1916. (view in google maps)

Bassett-Lowke house at 78 Derngate, Northampton, was famously re-modelled by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1916 for his client, Northampton model engineer, W.J Bassett-Lowke. Purchased for Bassett-Lowke by his father as a wedding present, the house had originally been constructed 100 years previously.

Characteristic elements of intervention in the Bassett-Lowke house in the bedroom:

The furnishing designs of this room, intended for guests, reaches the most extraordinary result of the post-glasgow period. The wall behind the beds and  the ceiling above them are decorated with elegant black-and-white stripes, chasing on the surface, forming 90° corners like the frame of a painting, imitating an ideal baldaquin bed extended to the entire room.

Despite this decorative pattern on the walls and the ceiling, which at first sight seems eccentric and oppressive,it sets the size of the room (about 4x4m).

Mackintosh also designed very simple light-colored lines with a narrow profile of blue squares on a slipway: a chessboard pattern also used in the footboard of the bed, which contrasts gently with the more linear decoration of the walls.

Characteristic elements of intervention in the Bassett-Lowke house  in the main entrance:

• Extension of the bow window of about 2 m, in which a sofa with Chinese decoration takes place. This motif is also used in the fireplace and in the chairs.
• Placement of the staircase in a position perpendicular to the previous one, screened by a square grid wood wall.
• Realization of a large fireplace that reminds the west side of the Glasgow Artists School.
• Two types of decoration printed on two different walls in which the triangular motif is predominant.
• Space made with the color black on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

References:

• Peppiatt Michael, Mackintosh’s last hurrah: meticulously restored, a remarkable English interior by the architect lives again, Architectural digest vol. 61, no. 11 (November 2004), p. 163-165
• Kramer Miriam, Mackintosh house in England, The Magazine Antiques vol. 165, no. 5 (May 2004), p. 50
•  78 Derngate, Northampton, Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society. Journal no. 84 (April 2003), p. 11.
• Return of the Mac, Building Design (May 17, 2002), p. 10

Website:

• https://www.78derngate.org.uk

Authors:

Alexis Barnabe, Michel Nocture, Gin Joen Yau