Lavender’s Blue by Kathleen Lines and Harold Jones
This is one of the few books illustrated by Harold Jones still in print. It was a major undertaking, with nursery rhymes fitted into picture pages throughout. He said of his work, ‘A book is a complete unity. I always plan it from endpaper to endpaper and try to keep the spirit of the first draft. It sounds a bit pretentious perhaps, but every single line of the finished drawing is calculated, nothing is superfluous or unnecessary.’
And this is what poet Walter de la Mare wrote of him:
See what heedful skill and grace,
His patient pencil fills the space…
Even the commonest objects tell,
The love for what he sees so well…
I think he learnt from early Renaissance painters like Piero della Francesca or Fra Angelico. His drawing captures the calm of that dawn before the Renaissance moved into full fervour. In this book there’s a real sense of the love de la Mare noticed, so that although it was first published almost 70 years ago and the clothes and styles, where they are not of some timeless rural world, are of that period, it continues to carry such a stillness and joy of spirit today.
I have a particular fondness for his work, perhaps because my father was taught by him. He started out as a farmer and it shows in his practical building up of a drawing, his knowledge of country life and feel for the natural world. Without any kind of sentimentality he reveals to us that everything is sacred.
