Table

This table was the last item of furniture Mackintosh designed for The Hill House. It was for the drawing room, a family space which could function both as a music room and a sitting-room. A colour scheme of white, pink, and silvery grey, with delicate, stencilled patterns and a rose motif, is punctuated by the striking black geometry of the table, one of the most elegant and complex of Mackintosh's designs of this period. The top is square and in the centre are four inlaid panels of mother-of-pearl. Each panel is square and is made up of nine smaller squares, each one set with its 'grain' against that of its neighbours to reflect the light in a different way. The legs take the form of a labyrinthine lattice - an open cube of intersecting square rails. Small square shelves are placed in the upper tier at the corner and, at the intersection of the vertical and upper horizontal rails, Mackintosh introduced another inlaid square of mother-of-pearl.