Pigotts, in the village of Speen in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, was the home of Eric Gill from 1928 until his death in 1940, where the Artist set up a printing press, lettering workshop and alternative community.
David Jones had previously been introduced to Gill through The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, Gill's Catholic community of artists and craftspeople, based on the idea of the medieval guild and founded in 1920 in Ditchling, East Sussex. In 1924 Jones had become engaged to marry Gill's daughter Petra, but in 1927 she broke off their engagement to marry a mutual friend. Distressed, Jones concentrated on art. Petra's long neck and high forehead would continue as female features in his artwork.
Jones continued to spend a lot of time with the Gill Family, firstly at Capel-Y-ffin, Gill's home in the Black Mountains between 1924-1928 and then at Pigott's, where Jones produced much of his work between 1928 and 1932.
It was following Gill's move to Pigott's that Jones became an important part of the art
world in London, being great friends with Jim Ede and joining with Ben and Wilfred
Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, Christopher Wood and Cedric Morris in the Seven and
Five Society. He continued to exhibit with them every year until 1933. Jones was eventually expelled from the Society by Nicholson in 1935 for failing to embrace abstract painting.
In 1965 Jones was proclaimed Britain's best living painter by Kenneth Clark, whilst his poetry, including the celebrated epic poem 'In Parenthesis' based on Jones's experiences during the First World War, saw him lauded by T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden
