Jones, David

The English painter, engraver and poet David Jones was born in 1895 in Brockley, Kent. He studied art at the Camberwell Art School from 1909 to 1914, and then in 1915 enlisted as a private in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. After demobilization in 1919, Jones attended the Westminister School of Art until 1921. From 1922 to 1924, he lived in Eric Gill's community of artists and craftsmen at Ditchling, Sussex, where he learned the art of wood engraving. After an abortive attempt at the carpentry trade, Jones learned wood and copper engraving under the tutelage of Desmond Chute, while in close contact with Gill. He started producing the illustrations for books like those from which he first learned the art of drawing, including Golden Cockerel's editons of Guilliver's Travels and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the coming years, he would illustrate several poems published by Faber press, including T.S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees. Jones began to work upon what would, in 1937, be published as his first book of poetry, In Parenthesis. The Anathemata followed in 1952. He died in 1974.