Mackintoshes fetch £1.3m

THE largest single private collection of furniture, drawings and paintings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh went under the hammer in the Capital yesterday for £1.3 million.

Belonging to the late television producer Donald L Taffner and his wife Eleanor, the items were sold at the Lyon & Turnbull auction house.

Among more than 100 items in the sale were a group of watercolours by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Two of the highlights were Bouleternère, painted around 1925-7, from his period in the south of France which sold for £65,000; and Yellow Tulips, a still life dated to 1919 which made £130,000 and will remain in Scotland.

A pair of mahogany card room chairs by the Scots designer made for his greatest patron, Miss Cranston, for her home in Glasgow, fetched £46,000.

“It was a fantastic atmosphere in a packed sale room with many of the bidders flying in from the United States and Europe, some leaving their 
private jets at Edinburgh Airport,” said John Mackie, director and specialist at Lyon & Turnbull.