The Sea, The Sea, mosaic mural at Tenby Museum, glass tesserae, slate and paint, 1991. Collection: Pembrokeshire County Council.
Jonah won a competition against five other artists for a mural on Castle Hill outside Tenby Museum. His design was a mosaic with slate inscriptions on a wall facing the sea, 10 metres long by 3 metres high. Its starting point was a set of verses about the sea in English, Welsh, Latin and Greek, which his colleague Michael Watts cut in slate.
As he worked on the mosaic, Jonah described the plan in his journal:
These inscriptions, nine in all, form the basic design, or dictate it, in the sense that the wall will be divided into nine vertical panels, each with an inscription, and with a general linking background of sea, its ripple and wave pattern and drift. The only bit of ‘realism’ will be a portrait of Castle Hill and its ruined fortress. Central to it all with be the boldest inscription of them all, ‘The Sea is His, and He made it’ from the Book of Common Prayer.
Detail.
Detail.
Photographs: Tenby Museum.
Cartoon, with text on reverse: ‘1st Rough for Tenby Museum Mosaic Mural, 33′ x 10′, with inscriptions on Welsh Slate. Jonah Jones 1991’.