Jonah Jones’s one-time imprint the Cidron Press has been relaunched by Scene & Word to take over its publishing activities. It has adopted as its logo a simple digitised adaptation of the original quite plain typographic one.
The Cidron Press will look after all Scene & Word’s books and publications by Jonah or concerning the artist. Its remit includes sales and distribution of all titles donated to Scene & Word by Seren Books, Y Lolfa and Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw.
Adastra Publishing, an imprint launched by Scene & Word in 2024 to focus on work by other artists, continues as a parallel entity.
A short history of the original Cidron Press follows below, quoted from Peter Jones’s biography:
[Jonah branched] out into small-scale publishing under the imprint of the Cidron Press. While Jonah was still living at Bron y Foel [the family’s home from 1948–49, on the slopes of Moel y Gest], one day a craggy old gentleman called E.G. Rowland had turned up with an introduction from a mutual acquaintance. Rowlie, as his friends called him, had been a civil servant whose job was to check weights and measures used by local stores. Whenever possible, rather than drive to his destination he would exercise his passion by walking over the intervening mountains. Having retired, he now sought a climbing companion. Jonah was delighted to oblige and thereby gain a hugely knowledgeable guide to the mountains of Eryri. In 1951 Rowlie published the first edition of his classic Hill Walking in Snowdonia, a concise, matter of fact but well written survey of all the main groups of peaks and the available routes up them.
Jonah set up the Cidron Press (so named after the stream flowing under Plas Afon [home from 1955–66]) to publish Rowlie’s new guidebook, The Ascent of Snowdon, in 1956. Like his first work, it was a simple pamphlet of a mere 30 pages or so. It was illustrated with handsome pen and ink sketches and a map of the Snowdon massif by Jonah (with typical modesty not mentioned) and photographs by Paul Bertalot, and carried a foreword by the Welsh Olympic bronze medal winner John Disley. The Ascent of Snowdon was such a success that (with various revisions) it has never been out of print since. In 1958 the Cidron Press brought out the third edition of Hill Walking in Snowdonia, the same year that E.G. Rowland died suddenly. The administration of the Cidron Press was time-consuming (Judith doing much of the work) and earnings barely covered costs, although as a publisher Jonah was able to order books from other firms at a discount. It was a labour of love, and Judith enjoyed the journeys entailed in delivering Rowland’s pamphlets.
The Cidron Press also published such items as a folio of Brenda Chamberlain’s poem ‘On the last night of our pilgrimage’ from her collection The Green Heart and greetings cards for Borthwen [Sir Michael Osmond-Williams]. They continued with the venture until 1971, when they passed the rights to the two Rowland pamphlets to another publisher to get rid of the workload.
From Jonah Jones: an Artist’s Life by Peter Jones. Seren Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-85411-556-0. Available from the Jonah Jones Store: £7.50)