These notes were written over twenty years ago when I was endeavouring to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Mackmurdo with a small exhibition at Forty Hall Museum, Enfield, & now urgently need revision. I place them in this blog for their, however remote, connection to the reception of William Blake.
During the 1850s a number of artists were exploring the possibilities of new expressive means in the graphic arts. Combining both the symbolism of the Pre-Raphaelites & a wish to reform design, the first designer who could be said to have converted his sense of style to the new objectives of symbolic patterning, curvilinear motif & structural simplicity was Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo.
Mackmurdo's work embraced many aspects of design: furniture, textiles & the graphic arts. It anticipated many of the characteristics of continental art nouveau. In his furniture, Mackmurdo relied on the well-proportioned shape of the Renaissance, & used light-coloured mahoganies & a new sense of structure borrowed from the East. Mackmurdo's importance cannot be underestimated, since by 1886 his work was hailed at the Liverpool exhibition, which many foreigners visited, as the most advanced & unusual in Europe.
It was in 1882 that he & a group of friends founded the Century Guild - an idealistic Morrisian association of designers - which produced the first complete art nouveau fabrics & book designs. The members of the Century Guild were aesthetes, in the sense in which the word is especially associated with the eighteen-eighties - when the writings of Walter Pater or Matthew Arnold were at their most influential. Beauty was cultivated as a substitute for God. The Century Guild was Ruskinian in the manner of Fors Clavigera. "Fors" as it became known, was addressed to the "workmen and labourers of Great Britain". It was entirely written by Ruskin & is filled with his invectives against industrialisation - its despoilment of the earth & its degrading of humanity.
Almost certainly the most memorable achievement of the Century Guild was the publishing of The Hobby Horse, a periodical which propagated its ideals, published between 1884 & 1891. It was sophisticated in both graphic & literary terms. From 1886 onwards they published articles by outside contributors including Ruskin, Burne-Jones, William & Christina Rossetti, & Oscar Wilde. This venture had considerable influence on printing & book-design. It is said that William Morris was inspired to set up his Kelmscott Press after encountering the elegant & urbane Hobby Horse.
While the imagery favoured by Arts and Crafts designers was almost invariably pastoral & reassuringly benign, there was a darker side even to the mind of the central figure of the movement - William Morris. This is certainly manifested in some of his fanciful tales, if not his designs. The same might be said of the work of a painter who was intimately bound up with Morris & the Arts and Crafts - Edward Burne-Jones. One could well speak of their unconscious, as well as conscious, evocation of evil, or despair. Ruskin, whose ideas permeated the thinking of all concerned with the Arts and Cratfs, was perturbed by thoughts that his age was inherently evil & that cosmic retribution was at hand. This is exemplified in "The Storm Clouds of the Nineteenth Century" - his two disturbing, even prophetic lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, in 1884. Oscar Wilde & Robert Louis Stevenson also attempted to represent, by symbol & allegory, the sickness of their society. A.H. Mackmurdo, who had a degree of sensibility, would have been aware of the unhappiness & alienation of his times.
Further Reading
Isabelle Anscombe & Charlotte Gore, The Arts and Crafts in Britain and America. London, 1978.
J.H.G. Archer, editor, Art and Architecture in Victorian Manchester. Manchester, 1985. Includes an article by Stuart Evans pp321-332 on the Century Guild.
Elizabeth Aslin, The Aesthetic Movement. London, 1969.
Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture: the Search for Earthly Paradise. London, 1980.
The Eccentric A.H. Mackmurdo, 1851-1942: 24 February to 25 March 1979, The Minories, 74 High Street, Colchester. Colchester, 1979. Catalogue of an exhibition. Text "Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo: an introduction to the exhibition" is by John Doubleday.
Peter Frost, "The Century Guild Hobby Horse and its Founders", The Book Collector, 1978, pp348-360.
Malcolm Haslam, "A pioneer of art nouveau", Country Life, nos. 4052-4053, 1970.
C. King, "Brothers in Style", Art & Antiques Weekly, vol. 19 no 4, 1975.
Larry D. Lutchmansingh, "Evolutionary affinity in Arthur Mackmurdo's botanical design", Design Issues, vol. 6 no 2, Spring 1990, pp51-57.
Fiona MacCarthy, A History of British Design 1830-1970. Rev. ed. London, 1979.
Stefan Tschudi Madsen, Art Nouveau. London, 1967 (World University Library).
Stefan Tschudi Madsen, Sources of Art Nouveau. Oslo, 1956.
Gillian Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement: a Study of its Sources, Ideals and Influence on Design Theory. London, 1971.
Nikolaus Pevsner, "Beautiful and, if need be, useful", Architectural Review, vol. 112, 1957.
Nikolaus Pevsner, "Mackmurdiana", Architectural Review, vol. 132, 1962, p59.
Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the modern movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius. London, 1936. Reissued as Pioneers of Modern Design, 1960.
Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture and Design. Vol. 2: Victorian and After. London, 1968, pp134-45.
Edward Pond, "Mackmurdo gleanings" Architectural Review, vol. 128, 1960, pp429+. Reprinted in J.M. Richards & Nikolaus Pevsner, The Anti-Rationalists. London, 1974.
Robert Schmutzler, Art Nouveau, 1964.
Robert Schmutzler, "Blake and art nouveau", Architectural Review, August 1955.
Robert Schmutzler, "The English origins of art nouveau", Architectural Review, February 1955.
Aymer Vallance, "Mr. A.H. Mackmurdo and the Century Guild", The Studio, vol. 16, 1899, pp183+.
Arnold Wilson, "A.H. Mackmurdo and the Century Guild", Apollo, November 1961, pp137+.
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