EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Brief Description of Item An important School Clock, 1896, designed by Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933) and Frances Macdonald (1871-1921), sponsored by Thomas Ross and Sons. The clock face with repoussé decoration depicting infants clutching at dandelions to signify the passing of time, the weights depicting owls and birds respectively.

Silver, white metal and walnut. Clock face: 28.5 x 28 cms Mark of T.R. & S. Glasgow hallmarks for 1896. Condition: Good, the surface slightly rubbed commensurate with use.

2. Context Provenance. Lawrence’s Auctioneers, Crewkerne, Somerset, 6 April 2006, Lot 219, Collection John Jesse, London Christie’s, London, King Street, 3 November, 2015, Lot. 81.

References. The Studio, vol.9, 1896, p.204, ill. p.203 The Athenaeum, No.3598, October 1896, p.491 T. Morris, `Concerning the Work of Margaret Macdonald, Frances Macdonald, Charles Mackintosh and Herbert McNair: An Appreciation’, unpublished manuscript, Collection Glasgow Museums, E. 46-5X, 1897, p.5. Dekorative Kunst, vol.3, 1898, ill. p.73 J. Helland, The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, p.86. ill. p.85 P. Robertson (ed.), Doves and Dreams, The Art of Frances Macdonald and J. Herbert McNair, Aldershot, Lund Humphries, 2006, p.86, F13, cat. Ill. 3.

Exhibited Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 5th Exhibition, New Gallery, London, 1896 (285). Doves and Dreams, The Art of Frances Macdonald and James Herbert McNair, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, 12 August – 18 November 2006, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 27 January – 22 April 2007.

3. Waverley Criteria The objection to the export of this clock is made under the third Waverley criteria. It is of outstanding significance for the study of the decorative arts in the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th century.

Detailed Case: Metalwork by the Macdonald sisters, either individually or collaboratively, is extremely rare. From both careers only some 17 items survive, in addition to this clock. The clock belongs to their most productive period of metalworking. Both had largely ceased working with metal by 1903, with the one notable exception of Frances Macdonald's late mirror The Dreamboat of 1921, now in the collections of the Hunterian Art Gallery. Collaboration was an essential part of their philosophy, an approach closely allied to the English Arts and Crafts movement and the teaching of the of Art. Not only did the sisters design their metalwork but they also made the individual pieces. There does not appear to be have been a clear division of responsibilities in the production of their work; both were skilled at design and making. Margaret (1864-1933) and Frances Macdonald (1873-1921) were born into a secure, large middle class family. The family moved frequently because of their father's changing career. By 1890, the family had settled in Glasgow from where her father came and in the same year they registered at the . At the turn of the century, the Glasgow School of Art was one of the most progressive in the United Kingdom which was largely due to the enlightened leadership of its director, Francis Newbery (1855-1946). His innovations included the establishment of technical art studios in 1893, the appointment of artists as teachers rather than the certified art masters approved by the London-based Department of Science and Art, the appointment of talented women to the staff, the tireless promotion of the school, its students and their work through exhibitions, lectures and publications, the nurturing of individual talent within the student body and the campaign for a new building which was initiated in 1894. It was Newbery who introduced the Macdonald sisters to Herbert McNair and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, having become aware of stylistic and content similarities in their work. They quickly became known as 'The Four'. The Macdonalds left the school in 1894 and by 1895 were established in a city centre studio at 128 Hope Street. McNair was to rent a studio nearby in West George Street and Mackintosh was working for the architectural practice, Honeyman and Keppie just around the corner. A series of highly productive collaborations ensued with different partnerships within the Four. These relationships became more formalised when Frances married McNair in 1899, followed by her sister, Margaret, who married Mackintosh in 1900. This clock is an example of a collaboration between the two Macdonald sisters and was exhibited in the London Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1896 where it attracted attention. It was reviewed in The Studio, sympathetically and condemned by the more conservative publication, The Athenaeum as 'ugly'. The Studio, on the contrary, described the work of the Macdonald sisters as showing 'so much novelty and so much real sense of fine decoration...and a not unsuccessful attempt to create a style of decoration which owes absolutely nothing to the past.' The Studio reproduced this square faced clock and two repoussé aluminium panels, Frances Macdonald's The Star of Bethlehem and Margaret Macdonald's companion piece Annunciation describing them as `symbolic', envisaging the `lines' in the works as part of some strange system of magic or `ritual'. Even so, the author, anonymous but almost certainly the progressive critic, Gleeson White, struggled to understand quite what was happening but was prescient enough to comment: 'Probably nothing in the gallery has provoked more decided censure than these various exhibits; and the fact alone should cause a thoughtful observer of art to pause before he joins its opponents. If the said artists do not come very prominently forward as leaders of a school of design peculiarly their own, we shall be much mistaken. The probability would seem to be, that those who laugh at them today will be eager to eulogise them a few years hence.' The Four were encouraged by Newbery to explore the English Arts and Crafts movement but they cannot be entirely categorised as such. Their unique vision was a fusion of a wide variety of influences and artistic styles owing something to the Pre-Raphaelites, Aestheticism, the Arts and Crafts movement, the Celtic revival, Japonisme and the emerging European Art Nouveau as well as being infused by Symbolism, mythology, the sinuous linearity of the work of Aubrey Beardsley and Jan Toorup during his symbolist phase. It was the nearest Britain came to an Art Nouveau style that it could call distinctively its own but with its own, unique Scottish identity. Although at best it received a lukewarm reception at the time, even in Glasgow, it was enthusiastically followed by some of the European avant-garde. Knowledge of these Scottish developments became available through their coverage in The Studio which was read and respected abroad. The Four were invited to exhibit at the eighth Secessionist exhibition in Vienna in 1900, the Turin exhibition of 1902 and subsequently in Berlin and Moscow. The Viennese financier, Fritz Wärndorfer who funded the Wiener Werkstatte of Josef Hoffman commissioned Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald to design a music salon for his house which unfortunately was later destroyed in the First World War. In the late 19th century the position of women in society was slowly changing. Education opened up new possibilities, not least of all in the art schools which held out the possibility of a financially independent career. The Arts and Crafts Movement, founded by William Morris with his socialist ideals, fostered this although not without conservative resistance from society at large. Once married, women were expected to assume a subservient position, and while the reputation of C.R. Mackintosh has steadily grown over the course of the 20th century, his wife's has tended to be eclipsed although this would not have been the intention of Mackintosh himself. Towards the end of his life in 1928, he wrote to Margaret; “You must remember that in all my architectural efforts, you have been half if not three-quarters of them”. McNair found his own position more difficult to reconcile. Long after his wife's death and with his own career in evident decline, he burnt most of his wife's designs and watercolours, now making her contribution rather difficult to assess. Recent scholarship has made progress in reassessing the contribution of the Macdonald sisters. Janice Helland in her book, The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald (Manchester University Press, 1996) and the book accompanying the exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Doves and Dreams, The Art of Frances Macdonald and James Herbert McNair edited by Pamela Robertson (Lund Humphries, 2006) have both made important contributions to restoring the reputations of the Macdonald sisters. This clock of 1896 by the Macdonald sisters provides important, objective evidence of their significant reputations and its export is therefore objected to under the third Waverley criteria. Summary of related items in public/private ownership in the UK. There is another square faced clock with a different figurative design and of larger dimensions dating from 1896 in a private collection as of 2006. A circular clock face in repoussé copper (1897) was displayed at the eighth exhibition of the Vienna Secession and has now vanished as has much of the metalwork produced by the Macdonald sisters. In UK collections there is a mirror frame in tin (1901) a brass sconce (1898), a pair of sconces in repoussé copper (1898) and a brass candlestick (1897) in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, a pair of sconces in repoussé copper (1897) in the V&A and a mirror frame in lead (1921) in the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.