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The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present Century Guild Inventions: The Century Guild of Artists at the International Inventions Exhibition, London, 1885 Author(s): Stuart Evans Source: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 21, decoration in buildings (1997), pp. 46-53 Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809254 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 22:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.229.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:39:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Transcript of decoration in buildings || Century Guild Inventions: The Century Guild of Artists at the...

Page 1: decoration in buildings || Century Guild Inventions: The Century Guild of Artists at the International Inventions Exhibition, London, 1885

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

Century Guild Inventions: The Century Guild of Artists at the International InventionsExhibition, London, 1885Author(s): Stuart EvansSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 21, decoration inbuildings (1997), pp. 46-53Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809254 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 22:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Page 2: decoration in buildings || Century Guild Inventions: The Century Guild of Artists at the International Inventions Exhibition, London, 1885

Century Guild

Inventions: The

Century Guild of Artists

at the International

Inventions Exhibition,

London, 1885

by Stuart Evans

T 1 1 he Century Guild is regularly cited as one of the most important and one of the earliest of the groups of artists and craftworkers that characterise the Arts and Crafts movement. Its work is also discussed in relation to Art Nouveau both for its remarkable use of organic decorative forms in designs for furniture, textiles, metalwork and print in the mid 1880s, a decade earlier than used elsewhere, and for its journal, The Hobby Horse, said to have had a direct influence on continental Art Nouveau, for example on Les XX, particularly in the work of Georges Lemoin (1865- 1916)1. The music room discussed here was shown at the International Inventions Exhibition in London in 1885, and was the Guild's first formal appearance before the public. It was an inventive body of work and the Guild expounded a powerful philosophy to underpin it, but the display has received little attention, perhaps through the confusion that it had been shown the year before

Fig.l Inventions Exhibition: Music Room by 'The Century Guild', from The Builder , 188 5. [author]

at the 1884 International Health Exhibition.2 It is known only from illustrations; the first is a woodblock engraving from The Builder (fig.l), and the second a photograph from The Hobby Horse

Fig. 2 The Inventions Exhibition: view of the music room from The Century Guild Hobby Horse, 1887. [William Morris Gallery]

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showing it from a different angle (fig. 2). Both are rather murky so it is the reference to 'The Century Guild', as the designers, which draws attention rather than the impact of the scheme of furnishings shown. The music room will be described here in relation to possible sources and to the development of certain ideas in the Guild's later projects. It has not been discovered if was designed and produced speculatively or as a commission, nor where it was later installed, if indeed it ever was.

The Century Guild of Artists, to give its full name, was a group of artists, designers and craftworkers initiated c.1884, active during the 1880s and perhaps into the early 1890s. Certain cultural and social aspects of its work were stressed and its designs were interestingly advanced. As a mouthpiece it had The Century Guild Hobby Horse , a self-consciously artistic 'little magazine'.3 Its aims, set out in the first issue (April 1884) were to "render all branches of Art the Sphere, no longer of the tradesman but, of the artist", and to "emphasise the Unity of Art(sic)" in architecture, decoration and furniture. Of the twenty or so associated with the Guild only two of them signed articles in The Hobby Horse with the tag "MCG" (Member of the Century Guild), the architect Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1942) and his partner and quondam pupil, Herbert Home (1864-1916). The artist Selwyn Image (1849-1930) made significant contributions to the Guild and its Hobby Horse magazine. Among those whose designs carried the Guild's 'C.G.' monogram are the sculptor Benjamin Creswick (c. 1854-1946) and the enameller and stained-glass artist Clement Heaton (1861-1940). Others who showed their word in displays included William De Morgan (1839-1917) and the mural decorator Heywood Sumner (1853- 1940). Mackmurdo described the Guild not only as a response to John Ruskin's (1819-1900) encouragement of the revival of craftwork, but also to the difficulty he had observed that the Gothic- revival architect James Brooks (1825-1901) had had in obtaining sympathetic excecution of his designs.4

There is a lack of documentary evidence of the Guild. Although it is known to have had agents in London and Manchester, and that these made the Guild's furniture, the circumstances of its inauguration are not recorded, nor is it is clear when it started or ceased. Apart from some printed circulars there are no surviving catalogues or price lists of its products, no listing of its clients or sales and no record of those associated with it, its organisation or its financial arrangements5 (unlike Morris and Company it was not a registered company). It is known chiefly through reports in the architectural and furniture trade press of a series of room settings shown at exhibitions in 1885, 1886 at Liverpool and 1887 at Manchester 1886; and notices of a display in 1884 at a local exhibition in Enfield, where Mackmurdo lived and where the Guild is said to have had workshops (though none is recorded); a notice of a later group of furniture shown at its agents, and an extensive

review of its major commission at Pownall Hall, Wilmslow, for the Manchester brewer Henry Boddington.6 Other 'contemporary' sources are Mackmurdo's own record (actually written thirty years on), and an article by Pevsner based on an interview with him.7

Following the success of the Great Exhibition of 1851, exhibitions of art and industry became a popular form of public entertainment in the second half of the century. The 1880s was the decade for such exhibitions. In London a permanent site was laid out in South Kensington, stretching from the rear of the Royal Albert Hall to the Natural History Museum and from Queen's Gate to Exhibition Road. The exhibitions held there annually were intended to inform as well as amuse. A theme was taken each year, for example 'health' in 1884 and 'invention' in 1885 with the International

Fig.3 The Inventions Exhibition: plan of the Century Guild music room [author]

Inventions Exhibition. The displays in the main galleries followed the theme with exhibits solicited world-wide, elsewhere, space could be leased by concerns such as the Century Guild, which was thus able to present its aims and work to a wide and numerous audience, where it would be seen near the lavish displays by furnishing trade firms who

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used the exhibitions to advertise their skills. The Guild's display was in 'Old London', a section something like a theme park where the buildings were grouped around a street, and square of frontages reproduced from London past with attendants in period costume. The Guild's space was fronted by a representation of a medieval timber framed house with a jettied upper storey, this gave a less than ideal space, the display stepping back at the jetty with ranges of leaded casements above and below. It is estimated at about 18 feet (5.5 m) deep, and 14 feet (4.1 m) in width and height (fig.3). The two views were taken from the end where the visitors passed, opposite the window wall.

This awkward, ill-proportioned space can hardly have suited the Guild, which, perhaps in deference to 'Old London', chose to show a formal scheme in the classical manner (indeed one critic wondered if they should not be known as the Eighteenth Century Guild).8 By the mid 1880s 'Queen Anne' was a widely popular style, in furnishings it might involve the use of pediments, pronounced cornice moulds and painted or inlaid decoration. It was, as Mark Girouard has shown, a conveniently loose name to attach to designs which were sometimes economical, sometimes fanciful, but rarely accurate in reproducing the originals.7 Mackmurdo, who was credited with the design of the main items in the display, had more claim to familiarity with the originals than most. In 1883 he had published Wren's City Churches, an appreciation of their architectural qualities written at a point when they were regarded as old fashioned and many were threatened with demolition as superfluous. The Guild's scheme was

not Queen Anne, but it was informed by a knowledge of English classicism from Wren to Alfred Stevens (an eclecticism reflected in the literary range of The Hobby Horse ) and, although without direct borrowings, there were many sympathetic references. The overall effect was architectural and rather grand, the colour richly toned in gold and amber with mahogany furniture and sharper highlights. Symmetry and a note of formality were established by a grid of interlinked, white-painted, vertical and horizontal members which defined a regular, well-proportioned space. Pilaster strips rose at either hand at the front of the display, echoed by others at the corners; the walls were covered with a strongly patterned paper between a skirting, and a bold architrave set at the level of the head of the lower window, and above came a frieze paper topped by an emphatic, deeply-projected cornice set at the cill level of the upper window. Across the rear wall the dentilled architrave was given greater depth to mask the step of the jetty and serve as a pelmet for the curtains which ran wall-to-wall, mitigating the effect of the casement lights.

The sense of balance and regularity established by this framework was continued by the architectural style of the furnishings and their formal disposition. The main items were a large mantlepiece and canopied settee centred opposite each other on a cross axis. Next in scale was an upright piano, then a writing desk, and smaller items included a table, a canape settee, a smaller table, an upright chair, a music cabinet and a firescreen with embroidered panels. The furniture was not designed as a matching suite, instead, the different pieces were made to complement each

Fig. 5 The International Shipping Exhibition, Liverpool, dining room by the Century Guild, from The British Architect,! 886 [author]

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other through a sympathy in style and by the use of a range of materials, the main timber was mahogany, a cabinet had panels of walnut veneer, various pieces were carved, there were copper bronze mounts to the writing desk and the canopied settee, which also had painted panels. It was enriched with textiles, ceramics, metalwork and sculpture.

The fireplace was centred on one wall, the fire opening flanked by panelled pilasters carrying powerfully-modelled, gilded, crouching

Fig.6 Dining room at the Brine Baths Hotel, Nantwich, designed by Mackmurdo and Hornblower c.1896 (demolished), [author]

figures supporting a mantle-shelf of exaggerated depth. The pilasters were linked by an entablature pulled forward in the centre to form a plain tablet against which was diplayed a large brass repoussé dish. Short pilaster

strips rose from the mantleshelf to the architrave, thus linking the fireplace to the architectural grid. Massive andirons of wrought-iron with brass sunflower heads stood before the fire opening and

Fig. 7 Photograph by Bedford Lemere of the dining room at Dorchester House, London, designed by Alfred Stevens c. 1870-75 (demolished). [National Monuments Record]

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De Morgan ceramics with jewel-like colouring stood on the mantleshelf. It is likely the fireplace was also of white painted timber and had a curtain across the opening. The following year the Guild was to show a similar fireplace, a more complex design in mahogany but using the same figures (fig. 5), the year after that it showed a further variation and another is seen in a hotel designed by Mackmurdo in the mid 1890s (fig. 6). The fireplace is a remarkably powerful high- Renaissance composition. The crouching figures must be a reference to Alfred Stevens's work, in particular his scheme for the dining room at Dorchester House, London, and its massive fireplace with supporting figures, executed c.1870- 75 (fig.7). That scheme was palatial in scale and conception rather than the bourgeois, almost suburban feel of the Guild's design which is smaller, simpler, more contained, yet the idea of sculpture integrated with architecture remains. Mackmurdo is known to have admired Stevens, as did Benjamin Creswick, the sculptor for the Guild's fireplaces (a Sheffield cutlery worker whose development Ruskin assisted). Following his death in 1875, Stevens's studio home in north London was open to visitors who would have seen the high- Renaissance style panelling and furniture he designed and carved for his study, which had exaggerations of composition and detail found later in the Guild's work.9 There is gravitas in the design of this fireplace, and the continued development over a decade and more suggests a serious-minded intention which occurs with other items.

The canopied settee is another type which recurs in the Guild's work. The one shown at the Inventions exhibition was massive, dark in colour and rather ponderous in appearance. The lower parts of the columns were carved, the dentilled cornice carried copper bronze enrichments and there were painted panels executed by Selwyn Image, 'Lignum Vitae' and 'Lignum Mortes', loosely painted and showing nude figures among flowing foliage. The painting was integrated into the architectural scheme as was usual with the Guild, indeed, easel paintings were the exception unless introduced by the client, as in the dining room at Pownall Hall.10 A similar settee was shown at Manchester, but in a paler wood with a much boxier cornice with brass repousse panels on the frieze. High-backed settees and settles, sometimes canopied or curtained, were to become a staple of Arts and Crafts furnishings, but these curious designs have no obvious precedent although there is a breadth about the composition which recalls the fittings of Wren's churches. A recurring motif in the Guild's work is a canopy carried on slender pillars to form an semi enclosed space, a tabernacle, as seen in these settees and, for example, on the sideboard in the dining room shown in in Liverpool (fig. 5), now in Manchester City Art Gallery, or a cabinet with painted doors now in the William Morris Gallery (probably shown at Manchester).11 A buffet designed by Stevens for the Dorchester House dining-room could be a

source for the Guild's motif, albeit a somewhat tangential one. It is a complex composition with a strong architectural quality, overlapping layers of space being suggested by the pillars and pediments, and with a lavish use of enrichment (fig.7).

The piano is known only from these illustrations and was in mahogany, designed as a free-standing item rather than to be placed against a wall. This continued the classical theme and was rectangular in form and architectural in character with colonnaded paneling to the back and sides and the keyboard carried between two pillars linked to the main carcase by a plinth mould and a deep, projecting cornice. Pianos have proved the Waterloo of many designers, yet here Mackmurdo came up with something which gave a logic to the instrument's awkwardness of form while visually moderating its bulk. Again there is no obvious precedent for the design; although classical sources are apparent, it manages to look quite modern. The mahogany writing desk, however, is similar to designs shown in pattern books of the turn of the 18th to 19th century period. It is delicate and refined in appearance, in contrast to the rather ponderous nature of the pieces so far described. The top is quite shallow and has six narrow drawers with repoussé copper handles and escutcheons. It is carried on eight slender tapering legs, each divided into four linked shafts, without connecting stretchers. Two small cupboards with paired barley sugar columns and linked by a shelf form a raised fitment topped by a pierced and fretted copper bronze gallery with shaped panels. The same design was illustrated in 1888 when shown at the Guild's London agents, Wilkinsons (when the same design of fire dog was also shown).12 This design is also known only from illustrations, as is the music cabinet, a strange piece which, were it not dated, might be taken for a phonograph cabinet, partly for its size and shape, partly for the stylistic oddity of the 'inverted cabriole' supports for the shelf. A similar cabinet crops up in an illustration of the drawing room the Guild designed at Pownall Hall.13

Towards the rear of the display below the window was a group comprising a table set in front of a canapé settee and a smaller low table and side chair to the right of the fireplace. Not much can be seen of the settee and small table but they appear to have been delicate in design and light in construction, rather like E W Godwin's furniture for William Watt. The chair, which has an upholstered seat and back panel, is remarkable for its exaggerated proportions and the use of architectural capitals as a decorative motif. The combination of low seat and tall backrest brings to mind C R Mackintosh designs of a decade later. The side framing members are carried up above the backrest and finish with spreading capitals duplicated to form a collonade linked by carved panels. Although this was criticised as uncomfortable the Guild was to use similarly exaggerated capitals again. The oblong table was of mahogany and stood on castors: as with the desk

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each leg was tapered and divided into four shafts, here topped by urn-shaped carved capitals then a spreading cushion mould; the legs are linked by wavey profiled aprons. The last two items of furniture are perhaps the best known among the Guild's work, both now in the collection of the William Morris Gallery, a folding firescreen seen in the back corner near the canopied settee, and a side chair (not visible in the illustrations).14 The

Nouveau, sharing a concern with the new and a delight in growth and vitality.

The 'Bayleaf' wallpaper and freize were designed by Herbert Home, their colouring rich, but low toned, in greyish green on orange red, the pattern on the frieze appropriately showing kneeling women in classical drapery holding ancient musical instruments and set against

two-leaf firescreen has a light and simple frame of yellowish mahogany, each leaf divided into three panels, the vertical framing carried above the top rail as carved finials. The panels are silk embroidery in blue and gold with gold thread, showing curling motifs of leaves-flames, and incorporate the initials 'CG'. The chair is a darker mahogany and of a conventional type with a shaped seat and backrail and moulded legs. It would be unremarkable but for the swirling fretwork of the back, originally painted green, based on waving seaweed. These two pieces have been discussed elsewhwere as proto- Art Nouveau. Mackmurdo's use of such motifs is concentrated from around 1883, with the title page to Wren's City Churches, to 1885, and it has been suggested that these motifs were related to contemporary publication on plant life, for example Darwin's Power of Movement in Plants, 1880). 15 The tradition was to look to nature as a source for decoration, but here it is a consciously 'new' view of nature, one that is dynamic, literally in motion. In this Mackmurdo's design may relate philosoph-ically to Art Fig.4 Bayleaf pattern wallpaper and frieze, designed by Herbert Home c.1884 [Victoria and

Albert Museum]

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roundels of bay, suggesting laurel leaves, while the body paper has stiff sprays of bay set on vigorously drawn stems (this also has the Guild's monogram). Home was also the designer of the 'Angel with Trumpet' pattern curtaining in velveteen in two shades of gold.16 This has a single repeated small motif of a draped angel, reminiscent of figures drawn by William Blake, an artist much admired by Mackmurdo and Home (and has the monogram). The carpet, designed by Mackmurdo, seems to have had a motif of musicians; it has not been located. An embroidered cushion worked by the Royal School of Art Needlework was displayed on the canopied settee (the Guild included items made by other individuals, groups or associations with whom it felt a sympathy). The furnishings apart, the display was dressed with metalwork and sculpture, ceramics and painted glass. The main item of metalwork was the pair of andirons; vigorous in design, these were the work of Charles Winstanley, an art-metalworker who lived in Enfield who had work in several of the Guild's displays (these are known only from illustration). The large circular brass repoussé dish was marked with the Guild's monogram and inscribed with information that it was made by George Esling to a design by Herbert Home. It is similar to one in the collection of the William Morris Gallery.17 The design of the andirons fits with the organicism of the Guild's earlierstyle, which suits a malleable material like wrought iron, while that of the the dish is more severe in decoration with a circle of rather stiffly treated leafage and roundels. The design of the dish is very different from the sort of old brassware then thought collectable, often with low life scenes, or from the geometric patterns favoured by craft hobbyists.

The ceramic pieces were by William De Morgan (1838-1917) and the table sculptures by Roscoe Mullins (1848-1907), both independent artists and neither closely associated with the Guild. De Morgan's distinctive ceramics are well known and with their traditional forms and jewel like colours would have been more appropriate to the classical restraint of this music room than would the work of other contemporary art ceramicists. Mullins was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and gave the Guild's display a firm link into the mainstream art world of the time. In the 1890s he joined the artistic community at 'Whiteladies', a house Mackmurdo and Home leased in Fitzroy Street, and later was to become teacher of modelling at the new L C C Central School of Arts and Crafts. The presence of these two artists brings the Guild's rôle into focus. Not only did it apparently have only two members it also appears there were different degrees of association; some were Mackmurdo's artist friends who were invited to add work to the displays, some artist craftworkers, and some were executant craftsmen who made up designs by members of the Century Guild, while commercial firms executed the furniture as well as the textiles and wallpapers (though these bore the Guild's monogram). The Guild's prospectuses list other makers whose work

was felt to be in sympathy with their own. This was disinterestedness of a high order because these could be seen as obvious competitors, firms like Morris & Co, which offered similar ranges of work, or the cousins Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, whose style is nearest to the Guild's. Mackmurdo later claimed that one of the Guild's main intentions was to offer an 'open venue' - actually by invitation - where artists and craftworkers could show work with their names attached, something that was not then possible in the commercial furnishing world where buyers and floorwalkers formed a nexus separating maker from buyer. The formation of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1888 was a more widely drawn response to the same problem, and after its formation the Guild ceased its annual appearances.

The grisaille painted glass was by Selwyn Image. It showed stylised foliage and flowers in two windows, and depicted female musicians in three others with inscriptions from Dryden, "From harmony, heavenly harmony, this universal frame began". This rather neatly apostrophises the Guild's approach as it was announced in 'The Guild's Flag Unfurling', a polemical editorial in the first number of The Hobby Horse 18 in which Mackmurdo claimed it was a "unity of aim and sentiment" which unified the Guild; certainly the music room displays no sense of over strict direction in stylistic detail. He continued: "The Guild provides a part song in which many voices may show their fullest harmony, and make that harmony as complete as enchanting, by the firmness with which each insists on his individualised part, and thus brings out his most valued and self distinguishing qualities of voice". Perhaps the choice of music room as its subject was as conscious a reference to the Guild's polyphonic ambitions as its classicism was to the Restoration period of 'Old London'? The critical response to the Guild's claims and display was divided on predictable lines. Those in architectural journals were enthusiastic about both the disinterestedness of the Guild's organisation and the quality of the display: "...the style of the work is vigorous and fresh, and is what it aims at being - quite of this century."19 Reviews in the furniture trade press, on the other hand, were hostile to the organisational system and carped about the design of the work. The Guild's display was undoubtedly inventive, fitting the exhibition's theme. The pieces were individually of interest, they were carefully grouped and the display was dressed with artworks. The idea of an exhibition stand laid out like a room was new at that time, and as a composition the Guild's display must have looked particularly sensitive when compared with the quaintness that went with the contemporary run of displays from commercial furnishers. The Guild's room was quite different, consciously artistic in intent, and although an assembly of work it had a unity of effect, balancing colour, form, structure and decoration, and integrated sculpture and paintings, fine textiles and ceramics. A modern room and confident in its approach.

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STUART EVANS Stuart Evans is a design theorist and historian with

a particular interest in domestic interiors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, how they were presented and how used. He teaches at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.

Notes 1 For Les XX and Georges Lemmen see Jane Block, 'Les XX and La Libre Esthetique: Belgium's Laboratories for New Ideas', in Mary Anne Stevens with Robert Hoozee, eds., Impressionism to Symbolism: the Belgian Avant Garde 1880- 1900, Ghent, pp. 40-58. 2 The catalogue to the Exhibition of Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1952, incorrectly states that the Guild showed the same music room at exhibitions in four consecutive years, starting with the Health exhibition in 1884, and this has been repeated. The Guild's display at the Inventions exhibition are discussed in Pauline Agius, British furniture 1880-1915, 1978, pp. 87- 89. 3 The Century Guild Hobby Horse (latterly The Hobby Horse) is discussed in Ian Fletcher, 'Decadence and the Little Magazines', in Ian Fletcher ed., 'Decadence and the 1890s': Stratford upon Avon Studies 17, 1979. 4 A. H. Mackmurdo 'History of the Arts and Crafts Movement' n.d. (circa 1925), unpublished manuscript and typescript, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, p 164; "To encourage the honourable status of the craftsman, Ruskin concluded one of his lectures [presumably 'The Political Economy of Art' given in Manchester in 1857] by a suggestion for the re- establishment of the medieval Guilds of craftsmen, and the substitution of the spirit of cooperation instead of competition. Twenty years after this I was able to do something towards giving practicel form to this suggestion by the establishment of the Century Guild of Artists.' Brooks's influence is described by Mackmurdo pp. 214-215. 5 The chief holding of Century Guild material is at the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, which includes documentary material in the form of Guild circulars (some were bound into The Hobby Horse)] other holdings include Colchester and Essex Museum, Manchester City Art Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 6 Sources for the Guild's display at the Health exhibition are 'Inventions Exhibition: Furniture by 'The Century Guild', The Builder, vol. 49 (1885), pp. 216-217 & 223; 'A Music Room at the International Inventions Exhibition', The Building News, vol. 51 (1885), pp. 286 & 288; 'Pen and Ink Notes by The Editor: Some Odd Things in Old London', The Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher, vol.6 (1885), pp29-32; 'Century Guild Music Room, Inventions Exhibition', The Century Guild Hobby Horse, no. 6 (April 1887). Sources for later Guild projects are listed in Stuart Evans, 'The Century Guild Connection', in J. H.G.Archer ed., Art and Architecture in Victorian Manchester, (Manchester) 1985. 7 A.H. Mackmurdo 'Autobiographical Notes', n.d. ( circa 1936), and 'History of the Arts and Crafts Movement' n.d. (c.1925), unpublished manuscript and typescript, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow; Nikolaus Pevsner 'A Pioneer Designer: Arthur H. Mackmurdo', Architectural Review, vol. 83 (1938), pp. 141-143 (reprinted in an amended form as 'Arthur H Mackmurdo', Studies in Art, Architecture and Design , vol. 2, 'Victorian and After', 1968) 8 Mark Girouard, Sweetness and Light : the 'Queen Anne' Movement 1860-1900, (Oxford) 1977. 9 Part of those fittings is in the collection of the National Museums and Art Galleries on Merseyside; the room is illustrated in Susan Beattie, Alfred Stevens 1817-1875, 1975, p. 43. Guild firegrates are visible in the illustrations of the later fireplaces. These were massive in form, cast in iron

by the Coalbrookdale Company, with cast brass figurative panels modeled by Creswick and sweeping fire-iron rests, and may reference to Stevens's work for the Sheffield ironfounders Henry Hoole. 10 Thought to have been installed subsequently at Pownall Hall and now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum cat. no. FH 664. 11 Manchester City Art Gallery MCAG/1985/39, and William Morris Art Gallery, cat. no.G14. 12 'The Century Guild', The Building News, vol. 54, PP.477&479; showing a group which may be linked to a Century Guild scheme scheme for a reception room for the Rev. Stewart Headlam. 13 T.R.Davison, 'A Modern Country Home', The Art Journal, Nov. 1891, p. 333. 14 The Builder, op. cit., p. 2 1 7 the firescreen is William Morris Gallery and the chair (one of a pair) G 36a and b. 15 Malcolm Haslam, 'A Pioneer of Art Nouveau: Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1942)', Country Life, vol. 157 (1975), pp. 504-506, 577-579. 16 Examples in several colourways are in the William Morris Gallery, cat. nos. B.26, 26a, 41, 72-74. 17 It was available as a cretonne or a printed velveteen; respectively, William Morris Gallery cat. nos. F77 and F40. 18 Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo MCG, 'The Guild's Flag Unfurling', The Century Guild Hobby Horse, no. 1, (first series), April 1884, pp. 2-13. 19 The Building News, 1885, p. 2 86

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