A Quiet Revival

There were always textiles in Jen Jones’ family. Not that they were physically close to her, as during her early years she moved between many places. The quilts and blankets were always in the background though, part of the narrative of her family that expressed who they were and where they belonged. When Jen talks now about her life’s work with Welsh textiles, she does so from the point of view of the human connections they encapsulate as much as the history and craft in the pieces themselves.

While her family is from the United States, Jen was born in South Africa and spent her early years there, which coincided with the start of the Second World War. From there, her family moved to Myanmar. They lived in Yangon in a house with a sweet mango tree in the garden, and Jen learned English and Latin from her mother and was taught mathematics by nuns in the city. These were the happiest years of her childhood, even while the politics and social complexities of the country taught her difficult and formative lessons. Much later, the family moved to Panama, and despite her peripatetic education, Jen excelled at school, and she earned a place to study drama in a prestigious women’s college in Vermont. The freedom she found there delighted her; secretly driving to the border of New York state with her roommate to drink alcohol, and later an eventful transatlantic boat trip to London, where she then settled and began her career as an actor. It was in London that she met her first husband, Elwyn Jones, a writer who also worked in drama. After some time together in London he decided he wanted to move home to Wales, to somewhere far enough where “you couldn’t see another house.” Leaving her acting career behind wasn’t a complicated choice. Jen says she would have followed Elwyn “to the ends of the earth,” besides, she adds with a characteristic laugh, “I think of life itself as quite theatrical.”

That was in 1970, and arriving in West Wales, Jen felt like it was a moment where people wanted to shake off their rural history and get rid of anything old. Textiles seemed to be some of the first things to go. As Jen visited auctions to buy pieces of furniture and other things for their home, she saw old Welsh quilts and blankets rolled up among piles of linen hidden under the tables. People considered them heavy, old and difficult to care for - they wanted modern and light things in their place. It was only right at the end of the auctions, as people were already filing out and the final lots were being called, the quilts were held aloft and unceremoniously thrown down again.

For Jen, with her knowledge of materials that were made for and used by the family, this was painful to see. What she saw in those timeworn fabrics was a culture speaking, an archive of domestic life. Jen started to buy these abandoned pieces and after some time she became known as “the lady who wanted quilts.” People began to seek her out, to sell to her, and eventually the textiles began to move out from under the table. Then came a demand to show them in magazines, and Jen started to take them to fairs in London. By that point, she had enough saved to invest in a small shop adjoining the cottage where she lived.

It was from those early days that she knew Jessica and Jamie Seaton, the founders of TOAST. Jamie was still hand-dyeing wool for early knitwear ranges, and they continued to be in each other’s orbits. Sometimes Jamie would come to Jen’s cottage shop and photograph pieces to inform his designs. She also wrote books, gave lectures, and curated shows on the history of Welsh textiles. She sold some of her collection but always held back the finest examples, building a reservoir of knowledge along the way. It was as if she had become a translator for these textiles. The hands that made them were anonymous, as if they had lost their own families, but now their histories were starting to be pieced together again.

Back at home, life was busy for Jen, who was raising her daughters as well as a menagerie of animals. During one memorable winter, there were twenty-two standard poodles in the house and the whole of Christmas was spent cooking rice pudding in the Rayburn for the puppies. Jen has also kept ducks her whole life, though currently she has “only nine.” She insists they are the best animals to live alongside and make wonderful teachers and companions for children (even if they occasionally swallow frogs whole).

Elwyn passed away tragically early, and Jen later remarried. Roger was a conservation architect who worked with churches in Wales. He photographed all her quilts, and they travelled far together, attending fairs and giving talks. The quilts grew to occupy their lives. In 2009, they purchased and restored Lampeter Town Hall to exhibit Jen’s private collection, which became known as the Welsh Quilt Centre. It was a wonderful life and they worked together very happily until his death ten years ago. Roger feels part of everything still and Jen talks about him with the greatest tenderness and respect. In her garden, there is an old apple tree, over two hundred years old, and it grew alongside another that was blown over in a great storm. She describes the pleasure of watching this surviving tree grow and fill out, regaining its shape and becoming stronger again with each passing year.

Among Jen’s many thoughtful connections is a long-standing relationship with Melin Tregwynt, a family-run woollen mill nestled in the Pembrokeshire countryside - also a cherished collaborator of TOAST. Over the years, Jen has quietly gathered a collection of archival blankets woven by the mill, each one rich with pattern, memory and subtle colour, forming a tactile mosaic within her white-walled shop.

At Melin Tregwynt, tradition and innovation sit side by side. The team draws on the company’s archive, reworking classic weaves with a contemporary eye. Exclusively for TOAST, they have reimagined the St David’s Cross - a geometric pattern first woven in the 1950s - continuing a dialogue between past and present, and between makers and collectors who share a reverence for craft.

Today, the Welsh Quilt Centre opens from March to November – with some of the same customers as when it first opened – run entirely by a group of volunteers, many of whom are experts in textile techniques. Knowledge now branches out and moves sideways rather than in a line through families, and that’s the key to all of it, Jen says. “The more you can share things, the better they become.”

Jen wears the Hal Denim Workwear Jacket, Baya Patch Pocket Stripe Organic Cotton Shirt and Cotton Linen Canvas Wide Leg Trousers.

As Time Goes By is on at The Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter until Saturday 22 November.

Words by Lindsay Sekulowicz.

Photography by Joya Berrow.