My friend and colleague Gwenllian Ashley, who has died aged 77, devoted her life to promoting the visual culture of Wales. As assistant curator at the Ceredigion Museum, in Aberystwyth, she persuaded the county council to create a collection of contemporary Welsh art for public buildings, and to allow a programme of exhibitions in the town at the Coliseum, once a theatre and music hall. And through her role as grant adviser to the Arts Council of Wales she was a fundamental driver in setting up the Wales pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
One of her most important projects was a collaboration with Jen Jones, a collector of Welsh quilts and the owner of the Welsh Quilt Centre housed in the Old Town Hall, Lampeter. Jen, an American born in South Africa, recognised the aesthetic and cultural value of the Welsh tradition of recycling fabric in quilts.
In the US quilts made by the Amish community, for instance, have long been collectors’ items, whereas in Wales quilts were generally considered worthless, used as part of a dog’s bed or as a mattress protector. To change this perception, Jen and Gwenllian put on several shows of outstanding quilts of geometric design at the Old Town Hall from 2009, which they then toured across the UK and the US.
Born in the village of Llangeitho, Ceredigion, Gwenllian was the daughter of Grace (nee Harris) and Alwyn Jones. Her father was education officer for Ceredigion. She attended Ardwyn secondary school in Aberystwyth, then went to Bath Academy of Art, Corsham (1960-63), before taking a diploma in ceramics at Loughborough College of Art (1965-68). She gained an educational diploma from Leeds University in 1969.
The following year Gwenllian travelled to Uganda, and taught at the Gayaza high school for girls, north of Kampala, then in Katsina and Kaduna in northern Nigeria. She met John Ashley, a civil engineer, in Lagos and they married in 1975. In 1980, when her daughter, Ceri, was three years old, Gwenllian moved back to Wales – and the marriage ended in divorce in 1986.
She found work at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, cataloguing the ceramics collection begun by the Davies sisters, two philanthropists who collected impressionist and contemporary Welsh art in the early 20th century. In 1992 she was appointed assistant curator at the Ceredigion Museum.
Gwenllian filled her house in Borth with Welsh ceramics, African textiles and large paintings by contemporary Welsh artists. Dressed always in blue, with her big hair, and sporting one or two pieces of statement jewellery, she was a stately presence at openings across west Wales and farther afield.
Her enthusiasm infected creative people everywhere and she helped the careers of innumerable artists. She curated several recent exhibitions at Old College in Aberystwyth, including a retrospective of Islwyn Watkins, Constructions and Collages, in 2018.
Gwenllian is survived by Ceri and by her brothers, Huw and David.
