Tony Pizzey – the Artist

 In 1965 Tony embarked on the teacher training course at Tower House, Cotham, Bristol, during which he met the newly qualified teacher Gerald Buchanan. Through their friendship, Tony had his first real taste of ceramics and with Gerald’s guidance and inspiration, the seed for the Cotham Chess Set was planted.

Upon completion of his teacher training, Tony embarked on two part-time roles at St. Mary Redcliffe Boys school and one at Nailsea Grammar school. The experience from these different institutions stood him in good stead for his next post at the new comprehensive school in Hartcliffe in 1966.

Tony’s friend and fellow teacher at the time, Ken Williams reflects; “Jenny (my wife) and I first met Tony when we joined the staff at Hartcliffe School – me in September `67 and Jenny a year later. Tony was an old hand by then of course – all of 2 years or so! Jenny and I recall Tony was experimenting with the chessmen around that time but couldn’t get the slip mix quite right – according to Liz Clarke, a colleague in the Art department. This is how we acquired our first two pieces – a King and a Queen – given to us as ‘failures’ because the finish was slightly ‘bubbly’. We still have them and treasure them. (We acquired two more later – probably in `69 – a knight and a pawn.)

As far as we know – and Jason (Tony’s youngest son) confirmed this recently – Tony’s inspiration was the unearthing of the Lewis chessmen, but also his fascination with medieval images. He saw it as important that the Queen should look pregnant – the personification of quiet power for the most powerful piece.”

Throughout his time at Hartcliffe, Tony became a participant in many outstanding stage productions and worked with his counterparts in the music, drama, and textiles departments. He met Leighton Clarke, a ceramics teacher, and more progress was made on the chess set concept. This included the making of the initial moulds as a complete set.

Leighton Clarke remembers, “(…) We were somewhat impoverished to say the least and were always looking for ways to make some money. I was teaching full-time, running two evening classes and selling pots. Tony came up with the idea of making good quality chess sets and selling those. He may have had this idea before he met me, I really can’t remember. Tony made a couple of masters from solid terracotta clay […] Using one of these I set to work attempting to make a four piece mould so that as little hand work as possible would need to be done on the cast pieces. This proved tricky to say the least.

As it happened, just around the corner from my pottery room in Hartcliffe was the office of the school’s Educational Welfare Officers. I got quite friendly with them and had many chats over tea and coffee. I mentioned that Tony and I were trying to make a chess set and were having problems with the mould making. Amazingly one of the EWO’s, Vic Feather, had trained as a dental technician and was a dab hand at making small molds. He suggested making a simpler two-part mold. The two-piece molds were much easier to make Tony and I worked on them together.

We cast the first few pieces in terracotta, and these were easy for Tony to hand embellish. I turned my mind to the porcelain slips and that’s when we hit major problems. I worked on the recipes for the white and black before we tried casting. They were fired to 1320 Celsius. I won’t go into the technical details of making slips suitable for casting but any trials must be done with great accuracy, measuring specific gravity, viscosity etc. (most potters just buy them ready formulated and mixed.) Back then it was not easy to do this, especially with porcelain. 

After many trials, I finally came up with two slips that cast and fired reasonably well, but unfortunately the shrinkage rates after firing were noticeably different. Also, the black body at high temperatures tended to slump and occasionally bloat. The thixotropy (runniness) of the slips began to gel over a short time too. This meant mixing just enough slip to cast a few moulds and then mixing more slip before repeating. It just got all too complex for us and we gave up.”