“Regarding the A/C movement or its philosophy, perhaps those who basically promoted it such as Morris would LIKED TO HAVE SEEN it become the primary influence on aesthetic thought or any other kind of thought (IN ALL ART FORMS INCUDING GOLF COURSE ARCHITECTURE) but that did not happen and I don't mind reminding you of it whenever you say that.” ~~TEP
Is that right? Often time is the friend of a historical figure. Time gives historians time to study, evaluate and appreciate in hindsight the impact of important person. There was no need for long contemplation when measuring Morris’s impact. William Morris died October 3, 1896. This is an expert from The Times right after his death…not in the section devoted to death notices, but on the editorial page.
“The death of Mr. William Morris, which we regret to say, took place shortly after 11 o’clock on Saturday morning at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, after a long illness, removes from the world a man whom we do not hesitate to call a great artist. A poet, and one our half dozen best poets, even when Tennyson and Browning were alive; an artist whose influence is visible almost everywhere; a craftsman who devoted himself, in a commercial age, to the union of arts and crafts, it may be said of him, with little or no exaggeration, that he adorned all he touched. And, if another famous epitaph may be allowed to suggest itself, we should say that, while his best work—a poem of his own, or a volume from the Kelmscott Press—is often present on our bookshelves, most of us find something in the nature of monument to Mr. Morris in the better tastes of domestic surroundings. It is seldom, indeed, that an Englishman is an artist of this type…
…It must be allowed, however, that Morris’s actual work was far more practical than his doctrine [Socialism]. The factory that he established more than thirty years ago in conjunction with such artists and kindred spirits as D.G.Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones, and Ford Maddox Brown, was at first an experiment, but soon became a commercial success, and ultimately worked something like a domestic revolution….Whether this improved state of things is permanent or not, and whether Mr. Morris’s admirers and customers follow him with much conviction and intelligence, may be left as questions. What is evident is that we are not at one with our fathers in matters of taste, and that our present ideas on such subjects have been mainly been influenced by Mr. Morris and his school.”
This was The Times judgment the moment his life ended, little did they know there was to be another two decades or more of A&C dominating aesthetics in the UK, Europe and America...in fact it continues to impact us today.
Here are few more respected sources that appear to be in conflict with your view:
“The public demanded these columns, pilasters, cornices and moldings, so these architects provided them. But toward the end of the nineteenth century an increasing number of people became aware of the absurdity of this fashion. In England in particular, critics and artists were unhappy about the general decline in craftsmanship caused by the Industrial Revolution, and hated the very sight of these cheap tawdry machine-made imitations of ornament which once had meaning and nobility of its own. Men like John Ruskin and William Morris dreamt of a thorough reform of the arts and crafts, and the replacement of cheap mass production by conscientious and meaningful handiwork. The influence of their criticism was very widespread even though the humble handicrafts which they advocated proved, under modern conditions, to the greatest of luxuries.”
~~‘The Story of Art’, EH Gombrich 1995
“So it is that the two decades 1890 to 1910 mark the high tide of the Arts and Crafts Movement, one which equally spread to the regions. In 1890 the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft were created, Finally the Movement’s message was taken into the art educational system. In 1896 the Central School of A&C opened, providing what was the most progressive education and training in design in Europe. At the Royal College of Art, WR Lethaby was appointed first Professor of Design, thus reinforcing the notion that handicraft was its basis.
The Movement effected what was a revolution in living style by whole swathe of the educated middle classes. The revolution had already begun under the impulse of aestheticism in the 1870’s. The home was now the apotheosized as the house beautiful, a temple to art.”
~~’The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts’, Roy Strong, 1999
Widely influential late-C19 English movement that attempted to re-establish the skills of craftsmanship threatened by mass-production and industrialization…The chief legacy of the movement to architecture was the appreciation of the vernacular leading to elements derived from them being widely used in the Domestic Revival…Finally, the movement was in the vanguard of recording, studying, and preserving old buildings, and argued for careful conservation of ancient fabric rather than wholesale or drastic ‘restorations’. Morris himself founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) which has been an influential agent ever since.”
~~’Oxford Dictionary of Architecture', 1999