Sentence Correction

Though the artifacts of pre-Columbian civilization created a stir from the very first European contacts with the new world in the sixteenth century, it was not until the later half of the nineteenth century that western designers, artists and crafters were inspired to imitate them.

(A)it was not until the later half of the nineteenth century that western designers, artists, and crafters were inspired to imitate them.
(B)they did not inspire imitations of western designers,artists, and crafters until it was the later half of the nineteenth century
(C)not until the later half of the nineteenth century was it that they have inspired western designers,artists ,and crafters to imitation
(D)until the later half of the nineteenth century western designers,artists ,and crafters have not been inspired to imitate
(E)they were not inspirations of western designers,artists, and crafters imitations until the later half of the nineteenth century

OA: A

Is the usage of expletive it , as is used in C, allowed in gmat?
If not, can C be crossed out also for this reason?

Further, Can B and E also be crossed out because the default antecedent for the pronoun in this kind of placement is the subject of the previous clause?
i.e:
though subject blah blah, pronoun blah blah
Thanks

Here is how I would approach this one.

(A) This looks ok. Possibly I might wonder whether on the GMAT starting a clause with it was not until is ok, but actually I believe that it is ok.

(B) imitations of western designers ... seems to convey that the designers etc. themselves are being imitated.

Also, the it refers to nothing and is unnecessary. You could have simply until the later half of the nineteenth century.

(C) While the it in A works, this it does not. For one thing the placement is awkward. For another it seems to be modified by that they have inspired.

it that they have inspired What is it?

(D) until does not work with the present continuous have not been inspired.

(E) they were not inspirations of is vague and does not effectively convey the exact point of the sentence, which is that they did not inspire.

So one way to handle this is to see that since the rest are clearly flawed, and since the structure of A is actually idiomatically correct, you can figure that the GMAT accepts the structure of A as well. Handling this question that way will get you to the right answer, and working in that way in general will get you to a 100% SC hit rate.

Meanwhile, I am pretty sure that the answer to your question is that yes, in certain cases using it with a delayed subject is acceptable in GMAT sentence correction.

The correct answer is A.