Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo was an architect and designer and co-founder of the Century Guild with Herbert Horne. Heavily influenced by John Ruskin’s school of drawing, gothic revival and renaissance art.

Trained in Essex, he first worked for the architect James Brooks, before seeing and meeting Ruskin at Oxford in 1873 where Ruskin was lecturing. In 1874 he traveled with Ruskin to Italy, and was greatly influenced by the Italian Renaissance art. Mackmurdo met William Morris in 1877, and founded his own architectural practice in London.

His work is seen as a precursor to Art Nouveau because of it’s formal qualities and influence on Belgian avant garde artists.