IT was one of the best-known interiors of Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street Tearooms in Glasgow in its early 1900s heyday, and now an ambitious project to preserve Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Oak Room as a key feature of the V&A Dundee has been given a £300,000 boost.
The new museum and Dundee City Council are working with Glasgow City Council – which saved the Oak Room interior from destruction in 1971 – to conserve and restore the “lost” interior, last used as a tearoom in the early 1950s.
Support of £200,000 from the Art Fund and £100,000 from the Scottish Government has boosted fundraising for the £1.3 million project, which has also seen support from the National Lottery and individual gifts.
V&A Dundee director, Philip Long, said: “The project to conserve and restore an entire interior by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, unseen for nearly 50 years, has been one of the most exciting parts of creating V&A Dundee. When we set about developing galleries for the new museum telling the story of Scotland’s design history, it was vital Mackintosh was represented in a major way. Now, with the aid of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund, the Scottish Government and others that has been made possible.”
Stephen Deuchar, director of Art Fund, said that which it had helped in the acquisition and conservation of a number of works in its 115-year history, this is the first time it had specifically funded a major conservation project in its own right.
“The Oak Room is one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s greatest achievements – his vision is reflected in every piece and detail of this spectacular interior – and Art Fund is thrilled to be able to support its conservation as it is painstakingly reconstructed, ready to go on display for the first time since the 1970s,” he said.
Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop added: “The Scottish Government is pleased to be supporting the Oak Room conservation as a central part of the new V&A Dundee, so that the public can admire once again this famous piece of Mackintosh’s work.”
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