INSIDE the archives of Glasgow School of Art (GSA), there’s a room filled with chairs – a number of them designed by famous Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Anyone who has visited the city’s Willow Tearooms will be familiar with the iconic, high-back design.
A reproduction of one of them has reappeared in a number of Hollywood films including Blade Runner and The Addams Family while also making an appearance in Doctor Who.
And that’s just one object. Because every single one of the tens of thousands of items in the archives has its own history, its own story to tell. But most importantly, it’s all available to the public.
“We spend a lot of time and money looking after all this but what’s the point if there’s no access, that’s what we’re all about”, Polly Christie, the archives and collections manager told the Sunday National.
She previously worked in art schools south of the Border and was always involved in helping to make collections accessible to the public.
Preserving for the future
Ask anyone in Scotland about the GSA and the first thing that will spring to mind are the two devastating fires that struck in 2014 and 2018.
Christie and her partner actually moved to Glasgow on the day of the 2014 fire.
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The first tore through the famed library inside the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building before another, larger blaze occurred four years later just before restoration was complete.
“Obviously the fire and the second fire were devastating but we retained an awful lot of the collection thank goodness”, Christie explained.
The collection is now housed in The Whisky Bond which is also home to the Alasdair Gray Archive and the archives of the Royal Conservatoire.
Christie explained: “We opened here in January 2016 and we want to mobilise all this rich history and heritage that the GSA does have and we have records and evidence of it.
“We have so many artefacts, paintings, objects and posters. There’s artworks on paper and sketchbooks.
“Our job is to preserve it, develop it, document it and preserve it for the future.”
One of the archive’s proudest achievements was its involvement with the project to restore the iconic lights which used to hang in the Mackintosh library.
An excavation following the fire recovered over 630 fragments of metal and, after a three year-restoration project, 11 of the 13 lights were created using entirely original parts.
The importance of history
The archives date as far back as 1845 when the school first opened and it still receives donation to this day.
As well as the numerous pieces of artwork, there’s also a number of records – many of which allow people to trace their family history.
When pressed on a favourite, Christie is initially unsure given the wealth of options available but she eventually settles on a letter from Ann Macbeth.
She was a member of the Glasgow Girls – a group of women artists and designers active at the turn of the twentieth century.
The archive holds a letter from 1912 in which Macbeth wrote to the GSA’s secretary and treasurer discussing her recovery after a period of solitary confinement and force feeding during her internment for suffragette activity.
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“She taught at the school and studied a number of craft subjects including embroidery. A lot of our students are quite politically active and seeing them respond to this letter makes a difference.
“I think it illustrates the richness of the material to be found in the archives, the characters they reveal and the activism and the protest that have been a regular feature of staff and students’ activities throughout the school’s history”, Christie says.
‘Keeping up with the kids’
Part of what makes the archive so extensive is it’s as clear a visualisation as you will see as to how trends have changed over time.
Inside one drawer is a necklace made out of seaweed. “We’ve got to keep down with the kids”, Christie says, laughing.
“We want to unearth stories that are relevant to today so that might be things surrounding mental health and wellbeing or the environment.”
With new techniques and trends comes new challenges for Christie and her team, who have to figure out the best way to preserve and look after all the new items which come their way while maintaining the space for the thousands of pieces they already have.
There’s also drawers filled with embroidered textiles, silverware and even a few old-fashioned dolls which the archivist admits can seem a bit creepy.
That seaweed necklace though is a far-cry from documents explaining the risks associated with drawing live animals which was made possible through the presence of Hengler’s Circus in Glasgow.
Christie explained: “Artists used to draw live animals. They would bring them up from Hengler’s Circus and they’re trying to figure out how to buy monkey nuts or what to feed elephants.
“You can only begin to imagine the risk assessment associated with that now.”
The team at The Whisky Bond continues to keep the collection up to date, with pieces from the school’s prize winners donated every year.
Creating a legacy
Every month, the team at the archive receives a number of acquisitions as well as requests to help with research.
As with any space such as this, there’s a number of things they still don’t know about a lot of the items with much of it yet to be catalogued.
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“We’ve had around 20 acquisitions this month with people wanting to donate. You have to get all the proper documentation, catalogue it, digitise it and put it online.
“We also have an inquiry service and get about 80 of those a month which can be anything from people interested in an exhibition to asking us to do research.
“Then we also furnish lots of exhibitions more widely. We have a loans programme with the Belvedere in Vienna and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.”
The GSA is also twinned with The Lviv National Academy of Arts (LNAA) in Ukraine with the aim of safeguarding the archive amid the war.
A group of four representatives from the LNAA were also recently able to visit. That sense of co-operation is one of the things Christie is most proud of.
“That word archive is kind of dusty. People think it means old and irrelevant, that it’s for others or for academics.
“But they meet us and my brilliant team and very quickly they realise it’s so much more than that.”
The Whisky Bond runs free Wednesday Wanders tours where people can explore a number of the collections available in the building – to find out more and to book tickets, click HERE.
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