My friend Ken Cook, who has died aged 78 after a fall, was a foundryman. There are not many such artists in England today, and few in the world, to equal his skill. He made lost-wax casting better than most, and famous sculptors would attend his outstanding workshops.
Ken described himself a plagiarist – he would work collaboratively, taking another sculptor’s work and altering the surface. He would listen keenly to his sculptor clients, looking for concise and insightful finishing, chiselling, hammering, moulding, welding and polishing skills. Ken’s unusual patinas were in contrast to the majority of bronzes produced elsewhere, and his craftsmanship is reflected in the reputation of the artists Ken worked with: Elisabeth Frink, Ann Christopher, Ralph Brown, Leonard McComb, Robert Clatworthy, to name a few.
Bronze fine art was in stagnant decline in postwar Britain, and sculptors such as Henry Moore and Lynn Chadwick were going to European foundries before Ken arrived at the Royal College of Art sculpture school (1966-67), where he learned unequalled skills from the Italian lost-wax master Alberto Angeloni. Although he and I both studied at the RCA in the mid-1960s, it was not until we were in our 70s that we shared our incredulity that we working-class lads were not only the first in our families to go to university, but that we had gone to one of the most difficult institutions in the world to get into.
Ken played a major part in mentoring at the Ruwenzori Sculpture Foundation, a UK-based organisation that funds an arts centre in west Uganda run by Ugandans who trained in bronze casting at Pangolin Editions in Gloucestershire. Its prime objective is cultural exchange, and at its heart is a foundry where Ken imparted valuable knowledge to a new generation of artists and craftspeople. He was first involved in mentoring Makerere University students in workshops held there in 2006, during the foundation’s infancy. Once the foundry was functional in 2008, several workshops and artist residencies followed, with Ken in a central role.
Born in Oldland Common, near Bristol, to Evelyn (nee Summerhill), a homemaker, and Harold Cook, a wood machinist, Ken went to Kingswood grammar school. As a boy he remembered feeling inspired by the bright colours of the jackets, trousers and skirts worn by the newly arrived West Indian immigrants in the dour greyness of postwar, post-empire Bristol.
While teaching at the West of England College of Art (1967-75) he met his future wife and sculpture partner, Ann Christopher, a Royal Academician and contemporary sculptor. They married in 1969. Six years later, the couple set up a significant foundry north of Bath, after learning that the sculptor Ralph Brown had a solo exhibition he wanted Ken to cast. The foundry was still running up to his death.
From July to September 2022, Pangolin London staged Out of the Workshop to celebrate Ken’s client sculptures.
He is survived by Ann.
