glasgow school of art library

It is more important than anything that no human life was lost but to very many people the Mac. Building was a like a dear friend. Thanks to the Scottish fire service’s work it is badly hurt but still breathing.

It might seem trivial compared to everything else but Tableware International back issues from the 1970s were all kept in the GSA Mac. library, [not to mention the Studio journals]. It is a sad loss because unlike the library itself they’ll never be replaced. I pored over those pages for many hours whilst writing my dissertation. Like Japanese temples the Art School will be rebuilt but who’ll give faded pictures of 1970s tableware a second thought?

Everyone who studied in the Mackintosh building has private and personal memories of the place. Remember the toilets where painters used to wash their brushes leaving smeary, spattered colours behind? The damp cloth hand towels that should have rotated but were perpetually stuck in one position? The toilets were replaced in the “modernisations” that heralded the closure of the ceramics department. These are the liminal spaces now lost except in living memories.Is it possible to comprehend the fact that everything turns to dust in the end?

Or maybe they had already moved to the main library…