Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect with the deep-set eyes, was the leading light of the Glasgow school at the turn of the last century.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Mackintosh knew how to formulate new language through the integration of indigenous culture with symbolism, neo-Gothic, Art Nouveau, and Liberty. He managed to maintain strong figurative symbolic values even in the process of simplification and geometric reform called for by industrial and mechanistic culture.