JONES, OWEN (1741-1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of
September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he
entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he
ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and
later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward
William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published,
at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known _Myvyrian Archaiology of
Wales_ (1801-1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the
14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are
deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in the
_Myvyrian Archaiology_ amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages
of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the
Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh
studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany--the
_Greal_--of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of
_Davydd ab Gwilym_ was also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th
of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street,
London.
JONES, OWEN (1809-1874), British architect and art decorator, son of
Owen Jones, a Welsh antiquary, was born in London. After an
apprenticeship of six years in an architect's office, he travelled for
four years in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Spain, making a special
study of the Alhambra. On his return to England in 1836 he busied
himself in his professional work. His forte was interior decoration, for
which his formula was: "Form without colour is like a body without a
soul." He was one of the superintendents of works for the Exhibition of
1851 and was responsible for the general decoration of the Crystal
Palace at Sydenham. Along with Digby Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of
works of art with which the palace was filled. He died in London on the
19th of April 1874.
Owen Jones was described in the _Builder_ for 1874 as "the most potent
apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days."
His range of activity is to be traced in his works: _Plans, Elevations
and Details of the Alhambra_ (1835-1845), in which he was assisted by
MM. Goury and Gayangos; _Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements_
(1842); _Polychromatic Ornament of Italy_ (1845); _An Attempt to
Define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in
Decorative Arts_ (1852); _Handbook to the Alhambra Court_ (1854);
_Grammar of Ornament_ (1856), a very important work; _One Thousand and
One Initial Letters_ (1864); _Seven Hundred and Two Monograms_ (1864);
and _Examples of Chinese Ornament_ (1867).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account