Hobby Horse

Century Guild wrought iron door hinge at Pownall Hall Cheshire 

Not quite as offbeat as the subtitle The Hobby Horse Men suggests,  this new book fills a long-gaping hole in Arts & Crafts Literature 

 Ivy wallpaper design, 1880s by A.H.Mackmurdo [WMG]

One issue contributing to the lack has been that the official name of the loosely-allied  group of men who comprised the Century Guild - a title as dull as Hobby Horse is quirky -  bears only a rough indication of its function, making a history hard to write.  Ably assisted by literary historian Jean Liddiard, the late Stuart Evans, who sadly died before publication, made valiant,  successful efforts to knit all the strands together.  The variously flying threads provide a mobile web of the whole symphonic enterprise [ to mix a few metaphors ]

The three chief men involved were Arthur Mackmurdo, architect and designer; Herbert Percy Horne, architect and art historian who later settled in Italy; and Selwyn Image, firstly a vicar then poet, painter and stained glass designer.

Century Guild dining chair designed by Mackmurdo, c1882, WMG

Their furniture like this now-famous chair has proved most durable, along with their irregular publication The Hobby Horse, whose title references the Shandean scope of contributors' idiosyncratic passions, while displaying the Guild's taste for fine materials, woodcuts and spacious design that inspired the young Beardsley.  Most of the page, tailpieces and illustrations are elegant; some, like the grotesque, jumbled cover, created by the nominatively-determined Image, are a mess - but an arresting mess.

Arts & Crafts Pioneers

Together with quotations from the Guildsmen's windy, wordy aims about uniting all the arts in pursuit of beauty and freedom, the book offers a lucky dip trawl of 1880s and 90s artefacts and men, including a few women like Michael Field and the Alhambra dancers, whom the men eulogised and (in Image's case) eventually married.    

One notable discovery that came recently to light is a mahogany table-top casket in the manner of a cassone, decorated by Image with late-PreRaphaelite scenes of lost love and perhaps intended for letters sent and received by a now-grieving widower.  Less sentimental is Horne's woodcut depicting the dachshund owned by Matthew Arnold.   Quite surprising in name and appearance is Great Ruffians,  with four pavilions round a lantern-topped tower, like something from Topkapi built by Mackmurdo as a cultural centre in rural Essex - yet another strand, pulling in contemporary Garden City projects.   

It's hard to resist the impression of a distinctly precious, homoerotic atmosphere around much hobby-horse activity, but this is probably an effect of the period's counter-cultural impulses, and of Oscar Wilde's friendship.  Undeniably, Century Guild's products both fed into and fed off emerging Art Nouveau decorative styles, while retaining all its own varied originality.