Margaret's May Queen

In 1900, Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh and her new husband set out to each create fifteen-foot panels using techniques that were new to them. With plaster-embedded burlap as the background and smooth plaster faces, painted string became bold lines. Papier mache leaves and petals and a restrained sprinkling of glass beads completed what we would now call a mixed media artwork. Margaret went on to create many such panels. They were installed in her architect husband's interiors. What a thrill to examine one so closely in "Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style" at the Walters Museum. Her May Queen attendants represent that moment when she found a way of working that suited her artistic vision.