The Mackintosh Tearooms, previously ‘Mackintosh at the Willow’, and originally ‘The Willow Tearooms’ is a Glasgow landmark designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1903, and restored to his original specifications around 2014. We dropped in for tea and a scone, rather than a proper visit or a tour, but even a short visit was enough to knock my socks off, visually. The building, its fixtures and fittings, all of its furniture and all of its decorative features are part of a single integrated design, which for me has as good a claim on the idea of gesamtkunstwerk as any Wagner opera (the clinking of teacups, the gurgling of tea being poured, and the murmur of subdued conversation add up to a music of their own). His decorative designs seem improbably radical for 1903 – Symbolist art may have been having its heyday, but not on the walls of respectable tea-drinking establishments. Yet here it is, abstract, decorative, angular and exotic, if less overtly sexual than the ceiling frescoes of his contemporary Gustav Klimt which were scandalising Vienna around the same time. There’s such a wealth of decorative detail, and so many graphic through-lines guiding your eye around the rooms, that it was quite hard to pay attention to the tea. It was excellent tea, however: I had orange-blossom oolong, while Spouse and Spawn both opted for the white tea with elderflower. Mine was fragrant, heady and mellow, with no end-of-the-pot bitterness, even when it got quite dark. The fruit scone came with an embarrassment of clotted cream, and a tiny potlet of strawberry jame, and was itself perfectly formed – warm from the oven, pertly crusted, with a fluffy interior and a fine, even crumb structure. I think we’ll back for a full-on afternoon tea at the earliest opportunity.
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