Sean:
Seriously now, just take a look at Tom MacWood's post #85.
It is interesting isn't it? But about what? As you can see it's interesting to know how Lutyens met Jekyll and all the various things about the English countryside of Surrey they sought out like old walls and ruins, and countryside "naturalism" so that they could apply them to their professions and art forms of landscape gardening and building architecture.
We even hear from Tom MacWood that someone connected to Country Life magazine became very interested in what they were doing and that furthered his career at Country Life magazine.
Sean, have you ever seen Country Life magazine? Well, if not I most certainly have, altough Tom MacWood doesn't think that means much other than I must stay in Holiday Inn Expresses on this subject.
Ironically, it has been around me every month of my entire 62 years old life. When I mentioned that to Tom MacWood he didn't seem to see the significance of it.
I admit I did not read Country Life in the 1890s, 1900s or probably until the 1950s but I would bet great money that its basic format and general content has never really changed. It concentrated on just what its name implies---eg "country life", the life in the English country side. It concentrates on building architecture, landscape architecture, gardens, it has a section on the sort of aristocratic debutante of the month
, it has a section on interesting craftmen, on auto racing, horse racing, golf and cricket etc etc. And in more modern times it has had just fantastic almost fantasy-like advertisements for real estate properties in both London and the English country side (and other European watering spots) that were so interesting and fantasy producing that I would wager that section alone was the real reason for the magazine's continued existent.
Anyway, Sean, look at what Tom MacWood mentioned in that post #85. Again, it's interesting about Lutyens and Jekyll and Country Life magazine, isn't it? But would you please tell me where or what at all the connection of that post and it's information possibily has to do with golf course architecture?
Do you see what I'm saying about his tendency to say all this stuff but basically just fail to make a connection with it to golf architecture, not to mention that any of that could've been some powerful influence on the golf archtiecture of the Golden Age, even when Hutchinson and Darwin wrote for it (after the beginning of the Golden Age, I might add
)?
Oh sure, I know, I've heard it a hundred times----that A/C "philosophy", mostly even unamed, or even unspoken, was just so pervasive, so influential on most all things in England or elsewhere that for that reason alone it only stands to reason the A/C movement must have been such a powerful influence on GCA as to warrant relabeling the great Golden Age of Golf Archtiecture "Arts and Crafts Golf"!!
What else can be said really than Bullshit!?
TommyN, go ahead and say that we really agree on this issue if you want to or even that its just a disagreement of some matter of small degree.
It isn't.
And I am most definitely not denigrating the Arts and Crafts movement or its philosophy or general theme or ethos. The fact is I've known it pretty well my entire life, I've read about it, lived with it, I agree with it and frankly I love most everything about it and always have.
But none of that and certainly none of what Tom MacWood has ever said about it or its proponents has made a strong enough connection of it to a type and style of golf course architecture (which I also happen to love) to call it a powerful influence on GCA of any era, including the Golden Age.