Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo

(b London, 12 Dec 1851; d Wickham Bishops, Essex, 15 March 1942). English architect and social reformer. He was an important figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He trained as an architect first with T. Chatfield Clarke (1825-95) and then with the Gothic Revivalist James Brooks (i). He was greatly influenced by John Ruskin (they travelled to Italy together in 1874), particularly on social and economic issues. Mackmurdo believed that his work should be socially as well as artistically significant. In design he valued tradition but sought a contemporary relevance, and he promoted the unity of the arts, with architecture as the central discipline. By 1884 he had moved away from the Gothic Revival style and adopted an eclectic use of Renaissance sources. Some of his designs have been described as proto-Art Nouveau and are thought to have influenced the emergence of this style in architecture and the applied arts in Britain and Europe in the 1890s and 1900s. His pattern designs for wallpaper and textiles incorporated swirling organic motifs (e.g. Cromer Bird, cretonne, c. 1884), while for three-dimensional and architectural work he often used a simplified version of classicism derived from English 18th-century sources. Brooklyn, a small, flat-roofed house (c. 1886; Private Road, Enfield, London), was designed in an austere and simple rationalized classical style in which the logic of constructional methods was emphasized in a way that heralds the work of architects such as C. F. A. Voysey.

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The British architect and designer Mackmurdo was apprenticed to the architect T. Chatfield Clarke prior to moving into the offices of the Gothic architect James Brooks in 1873. Two years later Mackmurdo established his own architectural practice in central London but, despite becoming an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1882, his output was limited in the 24 years in which he practised in the field. Deeply interested in social reform he was heavily influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and became far more widely recognized for his involvement in design, especially the foundation of the Century Guild in 1882. The latter comprised a group of craftsmen who worked on the production of artistic goods including furniture and metalwork, as well as wallpaper and textile design. The almost fashionable notion of a guild revival that looked back fondly to the Middle Ages was also warmly embraced by a number of leading figures associated with the Arts and Crafts in Britain. These included Ruskin (founder of St George's Guild in 1874) and C. R. Ashbee (a leading figure in the formation of the Guild of Handicraft in 1888). The Century Guild's philosophy was expressed in its periodical The Hobby Horse, the first issue of which was published in April 1884. Many design historians have linked Mackmurdo's work with English Art Nouveau, seeing the origins of the latter in the flowing, organic forms of the frontispiece for his book on Wren's City Churches (1883) and design of a chair which displayed similar forms in the patterning of its back. Although the output of the Guild was not prolific and it lasted for only six years, its influence was profound as a result of the participation of its members in many public exhibitions. From 1906, when he retired from architectural practice, Mackmurdo devoted his energies to social and economic reform.