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Are you saying the diverse artists of the A&C movement did not interact with one another? The arts and crafts of the period were the homes of the upper-middle class on up. The designs were in the magazines they read. The ideas where in the schools they attended. It was a unique period of heightened aesthetics."
No Tom, that is not what I'm saying.
You just said 'The diverse artists of the A&C Movement'!! Aren't you getting a bit ahead of yourself and a bit ahead of your argument and your premise in an historical context? Do you actually think that some of us are accepting of your premise that all the social and aesthetic thought of that time was a result of the Arts and Crafts Movement or even influenced by it? Or for that matter even aware of it???
Do you actually think we are accepting of your premise that the best of the early architects, Findlay, Park, Leeds, Emmett, Ross, Bendelow, Travis, Macdonald, Thomas, Tillinghast, Wilson, Fownes, Crump, Flynn, Raynor, Behr, Maxwell, Mackenzie, Banks, Bell, Hunter, Egan, Strong, Langford, Thompson were what could even remotely be called 'the diverse artists of the A/C Movement'
That's what you seem to be saying here. That's what you've always said regarding the A/C Movement and its connection and influence on Golden Age golf architecture---its influence, its importance, its pervasiveness is a given to you. Well, it is not a given. And that's precisely what's wrong with your entire conclusion of your A/C Movement essay. Your first assumption and your premise that these people and what they were doing were some part of the A/C Movement is not a given at all.
They were not the 'diverse artists of the A/C Movement', as you say. And it most certainly was not because the A/C Movement had not been given a name or whatever else remotely like that stupid rationalization you might give us next. If they had been all part of 'the diverse artists of the A/C Movement', at least some of them most certainly would've said something about it. No one ever mentioned it and there's a very good reason for that---and that is it wasn't their influence, certainly not a significant one. They spoke about their influences, and wrote about them---it can't be missed in the literature and chronicles they wrote on the history and evolution of golf course architecture.
In my opinion, your conclusion on the A/C Movement's influence on golf course architecture is bankrupt and I think that's being proven here.
You say the surface of the history of golf course architecture has not yet even been scratched!? That too is preposterous, Tom MacWood. You obviously say something like that because you think you and your research is going to turn up some massive historical find regarding golf architecture's history. I say, that's not going to happen, not from you or probably anyone. Golf architecture's history is in its books on its history. It's up to us to read them and reread them. And if you think you're going to revise them, you're wrong.