Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (12 December 1851 – 15 March 1942) was a progressive English architect and designer, who influenced the

Arts and Crafts Movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

, notably through the Century Guild of Artists, which he set up in partnership with Herbert Horne in 1882. He was the pioneer of the

Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style) The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It was the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of ...

and in turn global

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

movement.

Early life

Mackmurdo was the son of a wealthy chemical manufacturer. He was educated at

Felsted School Felsted School is a co-educational independent school, independent boarding school, boarding and Day school, day school, situated in Felsted in Essex, England. It is in the British Public school (UK), public school tradition, and was founded i ...

, and was first trained under the architect T. Chatfield Clarke, from whom he claimed to have learnt nothing. Then, in 1869, he became an assistant to the Gothic Revival architect James Brooks. In 1873, he visited

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

's School of Drawing, and accompanied Ruskin to

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

in 1874. He stayed on to study in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

for a while; despite the influence of Ruskin, the Italian architecture he was most impressed by was that of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

Career

In 1874 he opened his own architectural practice at 28 Southampton Street, in central London. In 1882, Mackmurdo founded the Century Guild of Artists with his friend and fellow architect Herbert Percy Horne. Others associated with the Guild included most prominently

Selwyn Image Selwyn Image (17 February 1849, Bodiam, Sussex – 21 August 1930, London) was a British artist, designer, writer and poet associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed stained glass windows, furniture and embroidery, and illustra ...

, but also Clement Heaton, William De Morgan, Heywood Sumner, Christopher Whall, Charles Winstanley, William Kellock Brown, George Esling and John Ruskin's protegee, the sculptor Benjamin Creswick. It was one of the more successful craft guilds of its time. It offered complete furnishing of homes and buildings, and its artists were encouraged to participate in production as well as design; Mackmurdo himself mastered several crafts, including

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on e ...

and

cabinet making A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood (solid ...

. In 1884, the guild showed a display in the form of a music room at the Health Exhibition in London; the stand was shown, with variations, at subsequent exhibitions in Manchester and Liverpool. It incorporated two of Mackmurdo's favourite motifs. One was foliage twisted into sinuous curves.

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

described Mackmurdo's use of such foliage on the title page of the designer's own ''

Wren Wrens are a family, Troglodytidae, of small brown passerine birds. The family includes 96 species and is divided into 19 genera. All species are restricted to the New World except for the Eurasian wren that is widely distributed in the Old Worl ...

's City Churches'' (1883) as "the first work of art nouveau which can be traced", identifying its main influences as

Rossetti Rossetti may refer to: * Biagio Rossetti (c. 1447–1516), architect and urbanist from Ferrara, the first to use modern methods * Carlo Rossetti (1614–1681), Italian cardinal, nobleman * Cezaro Rossetti (1901–1950), Scottish Esperanto writer ...

and Burne-Jones, and ultimately, through them,

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

. The second motif was the use of thin square columns, topped with flat squares instead of capitals. These columns influenced the furniture designs of C.F.A. Voysey, and, through him,

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh (7 June 1868 – 10 December 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macd ...

. Mackmurdo used them architecturally on his own house at 8 Private Road, Enfield (1887), and on a house for the artist Mortimer Menpes, at 25 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea (1893–94), where he incorporated them into a kind of Queen Anne style. Mackmurdo made a major donation to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, which is an important repository of the work of the Century Guild.

List of buildings

*6 (Halcyon) (1874–6, now demolished) and 8 (Brooklyn) (1883) Private Road, Enfield *16 Redington Road, Hampstead (1889) *12 Hans Road, Chelsea (1894) *25 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea (1893–4) *109–13, Charterhouse Street (1900) *Great Ruffins, Great Totham (1904) *Beacons, Wickham Bishops (1902) *Beacons Lodge, Wickham Bishops (c.1920) *Sandhills Cottage, Formby (1882) *Village Hall, Great Totham (1929-1930)

References

Victorian Web:
A.H. Mackmurdo, an Overview ("Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo" throughout)

Introduction: Philosophy & Background * Lambourne, Lionel (1980) ''Utopian Craftsmen: The Arts and Crafts Movement from the Cotswold to Chicago''. London. Astragal Books

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mackmurdo, Arthur Heygate 1851 births 1942 deaths 19th-century English architects 20th-century English architects English designers People educated at Felsted School Art Nouveau designers Art Nouveau illustrators English illustrators