It also featured artwork such as sketches, plates, photographs, engravings, wood cuts, lithographs and reproduced paintings.

[2] The Hobby Horse started publication in 1884 as the first high quality magazine committed solely to the visual arts.

[3] "The Century Guild Hobby Horse" was one of the last (and in many ways the ultimate) versions of the literature and art journal, a genre born with the Pre-Raphaelite Germ in 1850.

Unlike its successors, The Yellow Book and The Savoy, The Hobby Horse was not solely committed to an elite aestheticism.

It was founded in 1882 by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, and was influenced by William Morris, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater.

The Hobby Horse served as a way of sharing the views of the Guild and promoted crafted art as opposed to mechanical industry.

The Century Guild disbanded once members Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Herbert Horne and Selwyn Image became busy with their individual work.

The magazine also disseminated sensory values of Art Nouveau, specifically elements of the Arts and Crafts Movement which stressed the rebirth of the organic and lifelike aura in the designs and illustrations to overcome the mechanical and lifeless aesthetics influenced by the Industrial Revolution.

The Hobby Horse was "the first 1880s periodical to introduce the British Arts & Crafts viewpoint to a European audience and to treat printing as a serious design form.

"[6] The Hobby Horse was revolutionary- the printing techniques that were used were ahead of their time and were what helped art enter, survive and even flourish in the industrial world.

The Hobby Horse was "the harbinger of the growing Arts & Crafts interest in typography, graphic design, and printing.