Mackintosh Lady with Rose Silk Habotai Scarf

DESIGNER'S NOTES

A striking Fox & Chave silk habotai scarf with a Black and Red Art Nouveau illustration likely by the artist Margaret MacDonald-Mackintosh (1864-1933) for the menu of The White Cockade, an interior designed in collaboration with her husband, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, (1868-1928).

The White Cockade was a tea room within Miss Cranston's 1911 Exhibition Café at the Scottish Exhibition in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow. The space, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh took its name from the Jacobite emblem, evoking romantic nationalism and Highland themes and fused Celtic revivalism with Art Nouveau restraint, creating a richly symbolic yet modern space.

Together, the couple created an atmospheric interior with dark-stained furniture, stylised thistle motifs, and murals.

The distinctive menu, incorporating their signature lettering, stylised feminine form and abstract floral elements was not only functional but an integrated piece of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) approach central to the Mackintosh practice.

Though temporary, The White Cockade exemplified their mature decorative style and collaboration with the Cranston tea room empire, which offered women respectable public spaces and helped shape Glasgow’s progressive cultural identity.

COLOURS

STYLING

A Fox & Chave habotai silk scarf can be worn with the classic knot style or a pussycat bow. You can even create a shawl effect by knotting two scarves together behind your neck and allowing them to drape over your shoulders. More scarf styling ideas are available in this wonderful How to Tie a Scarf book.