A handwritten page from Barbara Jones' Popular Art sketchbook. Taken from the Barbara Jones Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Popular Art sketchbook (no date). Uncatalogued.

Barbara Jones (1912-1978) studied mural decoration at the Royal College of Art and was part of the circle of artists associated with its heyday in the 1930s. Various shipping companies, hotels and restaurants commissioned her designs and she worked on many important exhibitions. James Gardner requested her involvement over several decades: with ‘Design Fair’ for the Council of Industrial Design in the late 1940s; the Festival of Britain in 1951; and the Commonwealth Institute, London in 1962. Graphic designer, writer and broadcaster, Jones championed the popular arts. Her exhibition ‘Black Eyes and Lemonade’ for the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1951 and her book ‘The Unsophisticated Arts’ of the same year remain landmarks in the appreciation of vernacular English culture.

See also the research project page and a related set of images on Flickr.

 

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A white, red, blue and black brochure cover for the department store Simpson (Piccadilly) Ltd from 1953, designed by Barbara Jones. Taken from the Barbara Jones Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Brochure cover for the department store Simpson (Piccadilly) Ltd. (1953). Catalogue number: BJO-1-2-2.

A sketch showing the eye logo created by Barbara Jones for the Black Eyes and Lemonade Exhibition held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Taken from the Barbara Jones Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Black Eyes and Lemonade sketch (no date). Uncatalogued.