In 1874 he opened his own architectural practice at 28 Southampton Street, in central London. design. In 1882, Mackmurdo founded the Century Guild of Artists with his friend and fellow architect
Herbert Percy Horne. Others associated with the Guild included most prominently
Selwyn Image, but also Clement Heaton,
William De Morgan,
Heywood Sumner,
Christopher Whall, Charles Winstanley,
William Kellock Brown, George Esling and John Ruskin's protegee, the sculptor
Benjamin Creswick. The second motif was the use of thin square columns, topped with flat squares instead of capitals. These columns influenced the furniture designs of
C.F.A. Voysey, and, through him,
Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mackmurdo used them architecturally on his own house at 8 Private Road, Enfield (1887), and on a house for the artist
Mortimer Menpes, at 25
Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea (1893–94), where he incorporated them into a kind of
Queen Anne style. Mackmurdo made a major donation to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, which is an important repository of the work of the Century Guild. ==List of buildings==