JONES, OWEN (1741-1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known _Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales_ (1801-1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in the _Myvyrian Archaiology_ amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany--the _Greal_--of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of _Davydd ab Gwilym_ was also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street, London.
JONES, OWEN (1809-1874), British architect and art decorator, son of Owen Jones, a Welsh antiquary, was born in London. After an apprenticeship of six years in an architect's office, he travelled for four years in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Spain, making a special study of the Alhambra. On his return to England in 1836 he busied himself in his professional work. His forte was interior decoration, for which his formula was: "Form without colour is like a body without a soul." He was one of the superintendents of works for the Exhibition of 1851 and was responsible for the general decoration of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Along with Digby Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of works of art with which the palace was filled. He died in London on the 19th of April 1874.
Owen Jones was described in the _Builder_ for 1874 as "the most potent apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days." His range of activity is to be traced in his works: _Plans, Elevations and Details of the Alhambra_ (1835-1845), in which he was assisted by MM. Goury and Gayangos; _Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements_ (1842); _Polychromatic Ornament of Italy_ (1845); _An Attempt to Define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in Decorative Arts_ (1852); _Handbook to the Alhambra Court_ (1854); _Grammar of Ornament_ (1856), a very important work; _One Thousand and One Initial Letters_ (1864); _Seven Hundred and Two Monograms_ (1864); and _Examples of Chinese Ornament_ (1867).