the Painted inscriptions of david jones
Summary
As Nicolete Grey describes in her seminal study, The Painted Inscriptions of David Jones, (G. Fraser, 1981), the artistic form that David Jones called “painted inscriptions” developed slowly in his career. Under the apprenticeship of the stone mason and letterer Eric Gill, Jones began to include bits of “lettering,” reminiscent of Roman and medieval forms, in his devotional works. He also had a practice of including excerpts of prayers and songs in colorful lettering as an embellishment of letters to friends. In the 1940s, however, he began to turn these bits of lettering into artworks in their own right. Each piece presents a juxtaposition of fragments of texts from British history, Medieval Welsh and English literature, Classical literature, and the Roman Catholic Mass, arranged in visual conversation. His composition was somewhat free compared to the letter-making method of, say, Eric Gill; he wrote out an inscription “as I write a letter” he said in his 1965 interview with Saunders Lewis. The effect, as Jones also described, is that of a “living lettering” and cohesive whole that presents the viewer with a dialogue of words, letterforms, symbols, and colors in a single glance.
Scope
11 “deep-zoom” images of painted inscriptions, dates ranging from 1948–1967 (originals kept in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Stay tuned for more information about how to view the inscriptions very soon!
Key people
Jasmine Hunter Evans and William Kynan-Wilson (Open University grant leads), Jason Evans and Bethany Schofield (National Library of Wales lead), Huw Jones and Yasmin Faghihi (Cambridge Digital Humanities, TEI Expertise and lead encoders), Anna Svendsen and Tom Berenato (David Jones Research Center)
Editors
Tom Berenato; Catherine Enwright; Jasmine Hunter Evans; Huw Jones (Swansea); William Kynan-Wilson; Anna Svendsen; Bead Vidrine
Funding
Award of £23,000 from the Open Societal Challenges Grant (The Open University) for “Opening the Archives: Digital Tools for Democritising the Arts,” part of which will include a born-digital exhibition of David Jones’s painted inscriptions held in the National Library of Wales. This has covered:
scanning and hosting of 11 painted inscriptions of David Jones (originals kept in the National Library of Wales) on the Cambridge Digital Library and the NLW website
a hybrid specialist workshop (at the National Library of Wales) on TEI and other digital tools that will enable a team of eight researchers to create a born-digital exhibition of Jones’s inscriptions
a public engagement day to user-test a pilot of the Jones digital exhibition
a seminar for GLAM sector librarians and administrators about online exhibitions in Wales
Future
The editorial team are working to provide a born-digital exhibition of the painted inscriptions that will include: “deep-zoom” images of each inscription; transcriptions; translations; commentaries; and accompanying scanned material from Jones’s letters, library books, and poetic works that will help to elucidate the inscriptions’ significance.
Image Credit
Taken from painted inscription: Cara Wallia Derelicta (National Library of Wales MA02-A), 1959. Copyright: Trustees of the David Jones Estate and Bridgeman Images
