The Century Guild's Hobby Horse

Illustration: Hobby Horse magazine, 1884.

The Century Guild's magazine Hobby Horse is seen by many today as probably one of the most iconic of the official mouthpieces of the Arts & Crafts Movement, along with being perhaps one of the best designed pieces of printed work of the era..

The Century Guild itself was set up by the architect Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo in 1882 as a loose organization of architects, artists and designers working in a number of mediums. The remit of the group was the standard Victorian utopian dream, where tradesmen would work and be appreciated as medieval style artists. However, what was perhaps different about the Century Guild was the number and diverse backgrounds of some of the well-known names attached to the project. Apart from Mackmurdo, Herbert Percy Horne and William de Morgan were full time members and Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was an associate member. The Guild was in fact an organization that remained fluid as an institution and names both well known and otherwise, drifted freely in and out, allowing the Guild to boast a very wide base of experience.

The Hobby Horse, which was the magazine that was to be the public face of the Guild, was first published in 1884, two years after the foundation of the Century Guild. The publication was hailed by the Arts & Crafts movement at its launch as being the first publication that was fully dedicated to the world of design. However, for much of its life it was not untypical of a number of other periodicals of the period, filled with articles on a wide variety of subjects including literature, travel, religion, as well as that of art and design.

The contributors to the magazine over its eight-year life, it ceased production in 1892, were just as diverse as its subject matter and included the likes of Edward Burne Jones, Ford Madox Brown, John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde. It is interesting to note that many of the contributors to the magazine had little to do with, and had no experience of, the practical applications of design, or anything related to design.

The Hobby Horse, rather than being a magazine dedicated to the theories and practicalities of design and decoration, was meant as an example to the general public of the dream that was the Arts & Crafts lifestyle. The rarefied atmosphere that the magazine portrayed through its poetry, woodcut illustrations and articles might have made sense to the members of the Century Guild and perhaps many in the Arts & Crafts movement in general, but meant little to most of the critics outside of the movement who could be and were, often extremely vociferous. Many of the critics saw the Guilds magazine as representing more a society of fine artists than that of practical designers.

This perhaps is where the Hobby Horse became confused between the world of art craft and that of practical design. In many respects it promoted the individual expression of the artist turned crafts person but at the same time became disconnected from the world of functional design. It was not a magazine that dealt necessarily with the practical everyday issues faced by designers, industry and the world of design in general. It was by its very nature, unconcerned by the challenges that faced decoration and design at the end of the nineteenth century. It would be fair to say that it was in fact a magazine that dealt with a projected hope of a world where design would assuredly play a part, but only within a framework that would include it within that of art and poetry, an uncomfortable and often ill-fitting marriage between the objective and the subjective. However, to some in the Arts & Crafts movement, the ideal of art and practicality was one worth pursuing and the Hobby Horse along with the Century Guild is now seen as a template for that experiment that perhaps may be attempted again in the future with more success.

The Guild fell apart in 1888, with the magazine following four years later.

Further reading links:
Catalogue of A.H. Mackmurdo and the Century Guild Collection
The Century Guild Hobby Horse V3 (1888)
The Century Guild Hobby Horse: A study of a magazine
The Century Guild Hobby Horse (Volume 2)
Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement
The Arts & Crafts Movement
Arts and Crafts Movement (World of Art)
The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: Design for the Modern World 1880-1920
The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain (Shire History)
M.H. Baillie Scott and the Arts and Crafts Movement: Pioneers of Modern Design (Studies in 19th Century Architecture)
The Arts and Crafts Movement (A Study of it's Sources, Ideals and Influence on Design Theory, ISBN #0862940583)
Hand, Heart and Soul: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland
Architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement