Together with the National Library of Ireland, Architectural Press presents seventy previously unpublished drawings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The identification in the National Library of Ireland of three sketchbooks, from which these drawings have been selected, represents a significant addition to the body of early drawings by Mackintosh. The sketches date from a crucial period in the young man's development, spanning his highly successful student years and the beginnings of his professional career. Each of the three sketchbooks covers an area central to his growth as an artist: the architecture of his native Scotland, an important scholarship journey in Italy and, Mackintosh's first love and greatest influence, the study of plants and growing things. Essentially private, these little known and unique works provide privileged access to significant moments in the artist's intellectual and emotional life. In this book Elaine Grogan attempts to take them out of the library display-case and bring them to life in the hands of the reader. She invites us to look over Mackintosh's shoulder on his early tentative steps towards fulfilment as a creative genius. Connections are traced, both backwards in time to his training and forwards to his great successes and eventual bitter eclipse.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was an innovator. He is undoubtedly one of Scotland’s most celebrated architects. His astounding buildings creatively reinterpreted the past and opened the way for the Modern Movement. Architecture was his first love, though he was also a highly accomplished artist and designer of interiors, furniture, metalwork, glass and textiles. In addition his graphic design work, using nature and organic plant forms, made him an early exponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In the later years of his life he produced watercolour paintings of intense power and subtlety. His extraordinary work is still regarded today as innovative and modern, and continues to astonish and delight art lovers everywhere.

A showcase of the artistic output of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert MacNair, Margaret and Frances Macdonald, known simply as 'The Four'.

A study of the life and work Charles Mackintosh, the architect of the Glasgow School of Art and one of the great architects of the early twentieth century.

· Sketches from prominent architects, drawn from an international selection · A unique insight into how architects use sketches to develop and transfer complex concepts into physical form, enabling readers to improve the connection between their own ideas and designs · Reveals the secrets of the most successful sketching techniques used by architects for today's designers