ANTHONY HAWKSLEY In the late 1960s he began to develop a more natural style and explore new techniques such as carving and chasing, experimenting with molten forms, texturing and what became his speciality, acid etching. In the second half of the 1970s he developed the innovative use of enamelling in three-dimensional designs – the ‘silverscape’. He would have been better known if he had not buried himself in the depths of Cornwall. Gerald Benney
Anthony Paton Hawksley was born in 1921. From 1938 to 1940 he trained at the Maidstone School of Art in Kent and returned after his war service to study again from 1946 to 1948. From 1948 through to 1951 he attended the School of Silversmithing and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art under Professor Robert Goodden with Leslie Durbin being a visiting tutor. In his commencement year there was a very small intake of just three. His contemporaries were Brian Asquith, who was in the year above him, as well as Eric Clements and Jack Stapley, who started the course a year later. Eric Clements recalls Hawksley to be a very quiet and contained man who rolled his own cigarettes as he worked at his bench. After graduating from the RCA he spent a short period as foreman for the ecclesiastical silversmiths Blunt and Wray before moving on to the Design and Research Centre1 at Goldsmiths’ Hall, where he was a design assistant. His first major commission appears to have come soon after he graduated. In December 1951 he was summoned to Goldsmiths’ Hall together with five other designers and/or silversmiths.2 The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths had received an enquiry from St John’s College, Cambridge. In 1943 the College had received a large bequest from Sir Joseph Larmor (1857-1942), the physicist and mathematician who became a mathematics lecturer there in 1885 and was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1903 (he retained this post until his retirement in 1932). The bequest was to provide awards each year to no less than three junior members of the College ‘deemed most worthy on the ground of their intellectual qualifications,
1. See footnote 3, p. 255, in the Reginald Hill chapter for details of the Design and Research Centre. 2. Eric Clements, Robert E Stone, Cyril Shiner, Reginald Hill and Jack Stapley. Source Eric Clements: Silver & Design 1950-2000 (Birmingham, 2001) 3. Information supplied by Peter Payne of Payne & Son Limited of Oxford.
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moral conduct and practical activities’. Apart from a sum of money, the awards also included a piece of silver engraved with the College’s arms and the words, ‘Sir Joseph Larmor’s Plate’ adjacent to the year of the award. In addition to representatives from the Company and the six it considered suitable to work on the project, the Reverend Boys Smith, the College’s Senior Bursar, attended the meeting. Because of World War II and problems with Purchase Tax, there was a need to commission 34 pieces of silver. The stipulation was that each piece should not cost more than £30 and be suitable for a number of home settings. In 1952 Anthony Hawksley established a workshop at his home in Maidstone. However, by the mid-1950s he had moved to Great Rollright in North Oxfordshire where he combined making silver from his home-based workshop with lecturing. From 1956-8 this was at the Birmingham College of Art and from 1958-73 at Oxford College of Technology, which in 1970 became Oxford Polytechnic.3 During the 1950s, in common with many of his contemporaries, his work was influenced by Scandinavian design. During this era the majority of his work was of small size
Opposite: Abstract Flower in Amethyst and Silver Courtesy The Pearson Silver Collection, photographer Bill Burnett This amethyst and silver abstract flower study is always admired when it is exhibited. Set on a stone naturally encrusted with amethysts, the stylised flower heads are polished irregular forms of the stone set against a cluster of polished silver ‘leaves’. This semiprecious stone was popular in the 1960s and early 1970s and was regularly used by Stuart Devlin. Traditionally amethysts were used as an amulet, particularly for the protection of those in battle. It was often used in ecclesiastical rings and indeed is still worn by Catholic bishops. The stone is also claimed to have healing properties and has been used to open the spiritual and psychic centres. Anthony Hawksley received this commission through Payne & Son of Oxford, but the company cannot recall the story behind the order. Height approximately 25cm. London 1972.