Out of curiosity, just what were these other "'return to nature'" artistic movements going on in GB&I which were unrelated to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the time? Aside from GCA, of course?
Um... the rise of the Public Park, the increasing interest in nature as 'healthy'...
I am not sure that these were completely unrelated to the arts and crafts movement, but it is probably worth further inquiry.
Weren't these same guys buying Lutyen's mansions and commishioning Jekyll's gardens? It practice, the Arts and Crafts Movement was not much of a lower-class movement, at least as far as the consumers were concerned.
Were they? That was what I asked. I said it might be interesting to consider - and would be an interesting direction for further study. I think its a good question, and I see that you do too. Excellent.
It is a good question. My understanding is that a major paradox of the AC Movement is that while its practicioners and supporters were speaking for the poor and oppressed, they were mostly quite well-to-do. Likewise, the handcrafted goods they produced were often much too costly for the average person.
This may have been a large part why it didnt last, especially with the smaller "crafts." The careful, handmade product just couldnt compete price-wise with mass production. It is generally the larger items like the big houses for the rich that were appreciated and survived.
I dont know that the exact same people were supporting both movements, but they were supported by people of the same status and influence, in the same locations, at the same time. I think Tom MacWood covers this in his essay. The burgeoning centers for the arts and crafts movement were often burgeoning centers for golf course architecture. And the dates match up pretty well, too.
I think that TomM documents that some of the same people were involved in both movements.
So let me get this straight, between 1880 and 1900, 150 new clubs were established in the U.K. That means an average of 7.5 new courses per year over 20 years. Is this the 'mass-produced' Victorian Age of Golf Course Architecture that the golden age was reacting to?
Yes. This may not sound like much by todays standards, but keep in mind where golf was at this time. Golf expanded
tenfold in twenty years. And this excludes the United States, where there were probably close to or more than 100 courses in the works or built by the turn of the century.
And yes, they all reacted against and rejected the type of architecture being produced during this early inland period. Pretty much every one of them who wrote about course design made it a point to trash this period of golf course architecture. Even those writing decades later (MacKenzie in the 1930's, for example, were still bemoaning the lasting effects of this horrible design. Behr called these courses "abortions."
I think we underestimate how bad it was, because most of this stuff is long gone.
And what about the coastal 17 that were there since 1850? Were these the Victorian courses the Golden Age Architects were so opposed to?
I think those coastal courses generally pre-date the Industrial Age. These were the courses to which the "Golden Age" architects returned. They rejected the "Victorian" and "Industrial" (their words) and returned to the roots of the game. To me, this may be the most compelling similarity between the AC Movement and this period of GCA.
Were the same situations really present in golf that were found in the manufacturing and mass-production of consumer goods that brought the reactions from people like Ruskin, Pugin and Morris? Or were the common threads really quite thin - falling mainly on a common interest in 'the beauty of nature'? Is that really enough to include it as representative of a social and artistic movement?
Well, if you believe what the writers (mostly designers) of the time wrote, there were lots of similarities, besides the beauty of nature. Off of the top of my head, here are some complaints that appear both in AC literature and in GCA literature: Products were being churned out to keep up with a growing demand from the masses; Little or no thought was given to aethetics or beauty; The uniqueness of place, or vernacular, was ignored; The products were overy formulaic and lacked originality; the process was too mechanical, too impersonal, too rushed; all artistic qualities were being lost.
These similarities may not be enough to convince you, but I dont think that they can be considered "thin."
While I do believe that it was affected by the spirit of the times (A&C or otherwise) It seems to me that calling it "Arts and Crafts Golf" is misleading - as the links courses were still so influential in themselves, and they came before the movement began.
I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but I dont think you are quite grasping the arts and crafts movement here, at least in this context. Yes, these guys looked back past the Victorian courses to the earlier Links courses for inspiration.
This is in large part what the AC Movement was about-- Looking back to the state of the art before the Victorian/Industrial age. Had these designers not returned to the links but instead only looked forward, then their work could never be considered AC.
This has been a sticking point for many during these discussions. They treat the return to the Links as a decisive blow against TomM's thesis. But rather than defeaing the argument, the 'return to the links' may be the argument's single most important supporting fact.
I think Paul Turner really hit on an important point. We take it for granted that the links courses were always this huge aesthetic influence, but the fact is,
the links courses were not a primary aesthetic influence during this "Victorian Age." That is what these guys were up against, and what they rebelled against. This was a period where, according to them, courses were being produced one after another with mechanical and geometric precision, but with no thought given to the roots of the game, or its aesthetic. The "Golden Age" was at its heart a revival of pre-industrial Links Golf, just as so much of the Arts and Crafts Movement was an attempt to revive what came before.
Ironically, GCA may have been much more successful in acheiving this goal than most of the AC Movement.
So is it Golden Age Architecture's interest in natural-looking courses that makes it Arts and Crafts?
No. If it is Arts and Crafts it is because of the rejection of the Victorian/Industrial design, and a return to the previous aesthetic, that of the Links, along with many supporting factors such as viewing course design as an Art and the designer as an artist and a respect for the vernacular.
You know as well as I do that the AC movement didnt always express itself in "natural-looking" products. GCA is the same.