The Century Guild


Arthur Mackmurdo was a 26-year-old architect who was so inspired by William Morris’s accomplishments and ideas in applied design. Mackmurdo traveled to Italy in 1878 and 1880 and filled his sketchbook with studies of Renaissance architectural structure and ornament, botanical drawings and natural forms.
Back in London in 1882, Mackmurdo gathered a group of youthful artists and designer and banded together to form the Century Guild. Among these youngsters were Selwyn Image and Herbert R Horne. The Guild’s goal was to render all branches of art, the sphere, no longer of the tradesman, but of the artist. Design arts were to be elevated to “their rightful place beside painting and sculpting.”
 The Guild evolved a new design aesthetic as the group incorporated inspirations form renaissance and Japanese design ideas. These designs provided one of the links between the Arts and Crafts movement and the floral stylization of Art Nouveau.

In 1884 the Guild initiated the production of the Hobby Horse magazine. It was produced by Sir Emery Walker and was the first finely printed magazine that was fully devoted to visual arts. Selwyn and Horne’s work in this publication clearly expressed their passion for medieval arts and several designs contributed by Mackmurdo had swirling organic forms that were purely Art Nouveau in their conception and execution. But it was too early for this style to flourish; the designs were born before their time. Hence, the Art Nouveau movement only kick started a decade later.

In addition to anticipating art nouveau, Mackmurdo was also the forerunner for the private press movement and the renaissance of book design. The Hobby Horse was the first 1880 periodical to introduce the British Arts and Crafts movement to a European audience and to treat printing as a serious design form. It’s careful layout and typesetting, handmade paper and intricate woodblocks made it the harbinger of the Art and Crafts movement’s interest in typography, Graphic Design and printing.

Selwyn Image, title page to The Century Guild Hobby Horse, 1884.
Packing it with detail, Image designed a “page within a page” that reflects the 
medieval preoccupation of the Arts and Crafts movement.

 William Morris was extremely enthused by the design possibilities of book design when he admired the Hobby Horse’s well crafted typographic pages, generous margins, wide line spacing, meticulous printing alive with hand cut woodblocks, head and tail pieces and ornamented capitals. Original etchings and lithographs were printed as fine plates and bound into the quarterly issues.

In an article titles “ On the Unity of Art” in the January issue of 1887, Selwyn argued that all forms of visual expression deserve the status of art. He said that “even the unknown inventor of patterns to decorate a wall or waterpot” who “employs himself in representing abstract lines and masses” deserve equal claim to being called an artist as the painter Raphael.  Selwyn also ridiculed the Royal Academy of Art, saying that it should rather be called the Royal Academy of Oil Paintings due to its lack of range in the genres of art it exhibits.

The Century Guild disbanded in 1888. Members just continued perusing their own passion. Image designed typefaces, illustrations, mosaics, stained glass and embroidery while Mackmurdo focused on social politics and development of theories to reform the monetary system. Horne designed books with classic simplicity and restraint. His educational background had included typesetting, and his layouts have a precise sense of alignment, proportion and balance. 

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