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Murals

29 Ray Howard Jones, An Eye for People, 1959

Status: Destroyed
Type: Mosaic
Owners: Unknown
Location: Western Mail's Former Office's, Thomson House, Cardiff, Wales

Ray Howard-Jones won a national competition held by the Western Mail in 1958 to embellish their new office building in Cardiff. Chiefly known as an impressionist neo-romantic landscape painter, she came up with a 10m high mosaic mural full of vibrant colours and imaginative patterns. Made and papered in Italy before being transferred to Wales, the mosaic represented a giant eye and evoked the role of the local newspaper in the region. For nearly 50 years the artwork, considered as one of the finest post-war mosaics in Britain adorned the building, until it was wantonly destroyed in 2008.  The society was too late to save it and its destruction is a tragic loss for the city. The only remaining mosaic from Ray Howard Jones is a strikingly designed altarpiece from 1955, surviving in Marchmont St. Giles’ Parish Church, Kilgraston Road, Edinburgh EH9 2DW.

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