Jonah Jones

Leonard Jones (17 February 1919 – 29 November 2004), generally known as Jonah Jones, was born in County Durham, north east England, but known as a Welsh sculptor, writer and artist-craftsman. He was also Director of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin for four years.

Upon leaving school in 1935 at the age of 16, Jones secured a post as assistant at the public library in Felling on Tyneside. The librarian, Mona Lovell, became a close friend and mentor to him, encouraging his cultural interests and introducing him to Quakerism (for a time he attended the Friends' meeting in Newcastle-upon-Tyne).

Life The eldest of four children, Jones was born in 1919 near Wardley, Gateshead. His father was a local man who had been a coalminer before being invalided in the First World War, his mother came from Yorkshire.

Jones served with 224 Parachute Field Ambulance in British Mandate Palestine from October 1945, transferring to the Army Education Corps in May 1946. While working at the army's Carmel College in Haifa, he met and married Judith Grossman, a local Jewish woman (later known in Wales as a writer under the name Judith Maro). They would go on to have two sons and a daughter.

Following demobilisation in 1947, Jones's career began in a shared practice with the artist John Petts at the Caseg Press in Llanystumdwy, North Wales, followed soon after by a short, intensive stay at the workshop of the late Eric Gill, where he learned the techniques of lettering and carving in stone.

In 1982 he spent a year at Gregynog Hall, working with Eric Gee and David Vickers on the book, Lament for Llewelyn the Last, for which he designed the title page. In later years the Gregynog Press commissioned several designs from him.

Jonah Jones's major public commissions include work for the chapels of Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire; Ampleforth College, North Yorkshire; and Loyola Hall, Rainhill, Merseyside (now moved elsewhere); St Patrick's Church, Newport; the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Coleg Harlech, Gwynedd (now in storage awaiting relocation); and Mold Crown Court, Flintshire. His private work is marked by a preoccupation with Christian imagery and biblical themes (particularly that of Jacob), the Welsh mythological tales of the Mabinogion, the landscape of North Wales, and the Word.

He found time, too, to work in the field of art education, acting as external assessor or examiner to many colleges of art throughout the UK from the 1960s to 1992. He served on the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design, which reorganised the UK's art colleges into a decentralised system, from 1961 to 1971. For four years he was director of Dublin's National College of Art and Design, 1974–1978, when he was also a director of the Kilkenny Design Workshops.

He spent his last fourteen years in Llandaff, Cardiff, no longer able to do heavy sculpture, but still painting. His treatment of Welsh subject matter and working of Welsh-language texts were abiding themes throughout his half-century career in Wales.

He died on 29 November 2004, aged 85.

Selected writings A Tree May Fall, Bodley Head, 1980, The Lakes of North Wales, Whittet Books, 1983, Zorn, William Heinemann Ltd, 1987, The Gallipoli Diary, Seren Books/Poetry Wales Press Ltd, 1989, Clough Williams-Ellis: Architect of Portmeirion, Seren Publishing/Poetry Wales Press Ltd, 1996, Dear Mona: Letters from a Conscientious Objector, edited by Peter Jones, Seren Books/Poetry Wales Press Ltd, 2018,