Cabinet of curiosities

In 1951, the artist and writer Barbara Jones (1912–78) organised an exhibition called Black Eyes and Lemonade at the Whitechapel Gallery celebrating the popular arts of toys, festivities, souvenirs and advertising, to reveal to a largely unsuspecting public the richness of vernacular art in Britain. The original exhibition was evidently an Aladdin’s cave of objects, from decorated pub mirrors to ships’ figureheads, horse brasses, corn dollies and needle packets. Jones crossed the boundaries of folk art, mingling the handmade with the machine-made, and the traditional with the contemporary and ephemeral.

She wrote a book about the subject, published the same year and called The Unsophisticated Arts. This has just been beautifully republished by Little Toller Books (£30, hardback), with lots more visual material, a foreword by Peter Blake and an introduction by the art director and set designer Simon Costin, who is also the founder and director of the Museum of British Folklore.