Tumilty told BBC Scotland News the commission had been quite a challenge initially, due to the fame of the roses design, created by Mackintosh and his wife Margaret McDonald Mackintosh.
She said: “It was quite daunting at first, because the rose is an iconic symbol of Scottish culture, but I just started to enjoy the process and then be quite playful with it. Hopefully if they were around today they would appreciate it.
“It’s really a reimagined rose for the Games.”
The sculpture was a collaboration between Tumilty – who studied at the School of Art in Glasgow and has lived in the city ever since – and the creative studio Newsubstance.
The studio’s Hannah Rozenberg said: “We were thinking what would be a good sculpture for the Games, and the crane is such a symbol of the city.
“We did not want to simply directly recreate something that is already existing, like the Mackintosh rose, but instead find a reinterpretation of it, done in a contemporary way.
“So it is a great pairing of two symbols, with the rose and the crane.”