Tag: Barbara Jones

Another rave from the grave for the last of the holiday season.  This is revived mainly because it is not possible to have too much Barbara Jones on this blog, but also because I have been reading about her work for the Festival of Britain and will be posting about it in due course (due course being when I get my act together after the holidays, something which doesn’t seem to have happened yet).  

This was the first post I ever wrote about Barbara Jones; since then I have posted several more posts about her, but this is worth having for the bull alone.

I promised you Barbara Jones, and Barbara Jones you shall have.  I’ve always liked her work, which began when we picked up this book in a second-hand shop quite a few years ago now.

Not only is it a very fetching cow, but it also reminds me of County Shows, which are some of my favourite things in the world.  I’m off to the Bath and West later this week, and will be looking out for bemused-looking animals with rosettes in her honour.  Here is the sheep from the back cover.

And one of the more delicate line drawings from the inside – this is Leadenhall Market decorated for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

But the more that I find out about her, the more I am discovering that the (very many) book covers and illustrations are just one part of what she did.  Every biography I have found of her (on Wikipedia, or this rather good illustrated catalogue by Ash Rare Books) makes the point that the vast majority of her work was ephemeral and has disappeared.  She studied mural design at the Royal College of Art, and her work appeared on liners – here is a sketch for a very ‘popular arts’ trompe l’oeil mural for the Tavern Bar of the S.S. Orsova.

as well as working for the 1947 Britain Can Make It exhibition.

A striking tableaux in the toys section illustrating the famous Birthday Nursery Rhyme, from monday’s child ‘fair of face’ sitting before a dressing-table, through the days of the week to Sunday’s child ‘blithe and bonny and good and gay’ rightly put in a glass case out of reach of an every-day little boy who resents such perfection. Murals by Barbara Jones, figures by Hugh Skillen.

She also designed murals for the Festival of Britain.  None survive, but here are her illustrations of the Festival being built in 1950.

And, apparently, she also designed sets for The Woodentops.  How much more influential can you be?

But even despite that, I think perhaps her most important legacy was in ways of seeing.  The Festival of Britain poster which I posted a couple of weeks ago, was for an exhibition that she curated as well as designed.

And after I’d posted it, Mr Crownfolio came and plonked this on my desk (which had apparently been on the shelves all this time, unbeknownst to me).

She collected, wrote and illustrated the book in a rather wonderfully understated Gothic fashion.

While the book itself wanders over everything from Aboriginal mourning rituals to modern graves for pets, passing through poetry, floral tribute, anthropology and etiquette on the way.  The result is a very modern kind of book, where the pictures are working alongside the words rather than just illustrating them – I can’t recommend it too highly.

But in terms of what she achieved with her work, the fly-leaf gives as good a description as any.

Before it was generally fashionable to enjoy the decorative and amusing objects produced by popular art, Barbara Jones was already studying them and collecting them, and she did much for them when she put on the exhibition called ‘Black Eyes and Lemonade’ during the Festival of Britain.  Miss Jones’ house in Hampstead, full of curious and delightful things, is a vivid illustration of her impatience with the chastity of conventional ‘good taste’ and her feeling for invention, fantasy and vitality wherever it may be found.

I wonder what became of her house?  They should have preserved it for the nation.

Do you think that’s it behind her?

Should you feel the need to campaign for something to be preserved though, the last remaining one of her murals has just been put forward for a listing order.  It’s a mural of Adam and Eve done for a (Basil Spence -designed) secondary school in Sheffield.  The school is being demolished, but the Twentieth Century Society are campaigning for the mural to be reused in the new school.  I hope they succeed – more details here.

And if you want to know even more, there’s a book – A Snapper Up of Unconsidered Trifles: A Tribute to Barbara Jones which I haven’t read., but if it has more than three pictures in it will definitely be worth the price of admission.

 I have since bought the book and it is fabulous.  Her archive is apparently in Brighton, I might have to go and visit it one of these days.

You may have noticed by now that not only do I like Barbara Jones, but I perhaps like her owls best of all.  Which means that I have been wanting a copy of this, the apotheosis of all her owlery, for quite some time.

It’s a late children’s book from 1970, and given that the only time I’d ever seen it on offer was for £650 on Abebooks, I didn’t think we’d ever own one.  But, finally, eBay came up with a copy.  And at a price which meant that we didn’t have to mortgage the cats to buy it, either.

Now, as a set of illustrations of owls by Barbara Jones, it can’t be bettered. Here are the family having their nightly row about the correct colour balance of the television set.

And here are Twit and Howlet themselves.

This is their house.

And here is a passing cat (owls and cats are, of course, deadly enemies).

But it’s not just the drawing which make the book delightful, some of the page layouts are a total joy as well.

This is perhaps my favourite.

The details are also brilliant, like the sand in the illustrations above.

Along with the provisions the two owls buy for their trip.

But having said all that, I can see why there aren’t many copies available, because it doesn’t really work as a children’s book.

The plot is quite simple – Twit and Howlett build a hot air balloon and accidentally fly across the Channel and win a French balloon race with it. Organised by French owls, obviously.

But most of the book isn’t concerned with what happens, it’s all about building the balloon.  And it’s done with a sense of humour (and a few long words) that is probably beyond the average picture book reader.

Thinking about what there was left to do, Howlet got depressed. ‘Critical Path Analysis,’ he said.  Twit looked startled. ‘That means start the longest problem first and our longest problem is the gunge for the envelope.’
‘What’s gunge?’ Twit asked.
‘Oil, rubber or mastic,’ replied Howlet, importantly.
‘What’s mastic?’
‘Gummy stuff, I think.’
Twit gave Howlet a withering look. ‘Same as gunge, in fact; what a one you are for complicating things.’

Meanwhile the owl family are still arguing over the television set.

Next morning Howlet went back to the library and then on to the Chemist’s. He came back at last with a tin of something that the books and the Librarian and the Chemist all said would be suitable.

They started to treat the envelope, first with elation, then with stickiness, and at last with a creeping immobility that had to be felt to be believed; but it was all done at last and hung up to dry.

The Chemist had prudently given Howlet a bottle of gunge-solvent, so they had a long gruesome preen before dinner.

I love it, but I don’t think that’s quite the point.

I also think that she lost interest once the balloon had been built – the later illustrations do rather tail off in quality and detail. But you will be relieved to hear that the owls do get home safely in the end, and they get to see themselves with the cup on television.

It was the best colour-row ever.

And quite possibly the best owls ever too.

So, why, you may be wondering, am I bothering you with 1950s children’s ephemera today?  Evocative and delightful, to be sure, but what’s the reason for its being here?

Here’s a clue.

The roundabout and its flying fairground horses have turned up before on here.  And in each case they are the work of Barbara Jones.

In amongst all of her ephemeral works like murals and exhibition designs, the fact that she also designed The Woodentops tends to be forgotten.  But surely the series must have reached more people than anything else she did.

Apart from a few rare survivals, the series has pretty much disappeared, which means it’s hard to see what she created.  But there were also three spin-off books of which this pop-up design is one.

The fairground scene is the clearest hint that she was still using her own interests and style even while designing for children.  But Spotty Dog, who definitely has a bit of Staffordshire china in his breeding, is a reminder of her interest in folk art.

While some of the twins’ birthday present toys must have looked a bit old-fashioned, even in 1955.

So although the drawings were a bit more sharp-edged than her usual work, the sensibility and eye are still very recognisably the same.  Which I love, because there is no reason at all why children shouldn’t have art and illustration of the highest quality.

Now at this point, I’d usually be complaining that no one would ever commission someone as left-field as Barbara Jones to design a book or series these days.  But for a change that isn’t true.  Of course there is plenty of sub-standard stuff out there (I’m looking at you, Peppa Pig spin-off books), but, as I’ve been discovering over the last four years, there is also a wealth of fantastic children’s illustration and animation too.

What we’re really missing these days is someone as idiosyncratic as Barbara Jones designing and illustrating books for grown ups instead.  But that’s a whole other story.