Herbert Percy Horne [also known as Herbert P. Horne; and as Herbert Horne] was born in London, England on 18 February 1864 and was articled to the architect George Vigers (1854-?) in London. He then worked in the studio of Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1942), becoming a partner in the 1880s. The partnership was dissolved in 1892.
Horne's most significant building as an architect is considered to have been the Chapel of the Ascension in Hyde Park Place, Bayswater Road, London, designed in 1889–90. From the mid-1890s Horne produced little architectural work and focused his creative activities on the applied and decorative arts. He designed textiles, wall-coverings, books and bookplates. He was also the author of a number of important books on Renaissance art.
Horne was a member of the Century Guild and during the 1880s and 1890s was editor of the Century Guild Hobby Horse, a quarterly magazine which had been co-founded by Mackmurdo. Horne also founded the Riccardi Press, a private press in 1909, and designed the Riccardi typeface.
"Privately a libertine, his [Horne's] personal life amounted to frequenting bars and keeping numerous mistresses in a bohemian lifestyle. He was frequently in contact with Oscar Wilde between 1886 and 1891." [Dictionary of Art Historians]
Horne visited Italy on a number occasions in the 1890s and settled there permanently in 1904. He died in Florence, Italy on 14 April 1916.
Codell, Julie Francia Chelsea bohemian: Herbert Percy Horne, the critic as artist. Ph.D. thesis, University of Indiana, 1978
Codell, Julie. ‘Horne's Botticelli: Pre-Raphaelite Modernity, Historiography and the Aesthetic of Intensity’. Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies, vol. 2, 1989 pp. 27–41
Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. Compiled by Antonia Brodie, et al. Volume 1: A-K. London; New York: British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects/Continuum, 2001
Evans, Stuart. ‘Century Guild inventions: the Century Guild of Artists at the International Inventions Exhibition, London, 1885’. Journal of the Decorative Arts Society no. 21, 1997 pp. 46–53
Fletcher, Ian. Rediscovering Herbert Horne: poet, architect, typographer, art historian. Greensboro, NC : ELT Pr., 1990.
‘Obituary’. The Builder vol. 110, 28 April 1916 p. 316