A Snapper up of Unconsidered Trifles: A Tribute to Barbara Jones

Barbara Jones was a ‘jobbing’ artist par excellence. As long as her brief gave her enough freedom to express her own ideas she was prepared to turn her hand to making murals, designing exhibition displays, painting topographical water-colours, creating dust jackets etc. She was supremely confident whether designing a Lord Mayor’s show, a stand at the Festival of Britain, or water-colours for Recording Britain.

She is perhaps best remembered for championing ‘unsophisticated’ arts – the simple art and artefacts of seaside memorabila, canal boats, tattoo palours, public houses and the like. She curated the much loved Festival of Britain exhibition of such bric-a-brac – Black Eyes & Lemonade and wrote a number of books on her enthusiasm for the eccentric – The Unsophisticated Arts, Design for Death and Follies and Grottoes.