The Man Who Made the Ivors

Mike was 31 when he decided he had had enough of large companies and bought a small non-ferrous foundry in North London.

It was tucked behind a parade of shops, in disused Co-op funeral stables, operating since 1947 as Victoria Foundry.

He inherited a jumble of jobs and a heap of obsolete patterns.

Among them, a history.

The foundry had once produced the Ivor Novello Awards.

He contacted the organisers and was told he would not be making them. The previous year had gone badly with the old owners. .

He asked for one chance.
One year. Deliver, or be out.
That was fifty years ago.

The award itself had been designed by the sculptor Hazel Underwood and first presented in 1956.

Originally it was made using the lost-wax casting process, supervised by the artist.

By the time Mike took over, production had shifted to sand casting.

Sand casting is workable, but it softens detail and requires heavier hand finishing compared with lost-wax work.

That first year, the specialist who normally did the hand finishing died suddenly.

Mike and his foundry manager, Russell Lucas, had to complete the finishing themselves.

It was trial, error, and a degree of panic.

The awards were ready on time.

From 1977 onward, Mike was invited to the ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel.

He would drive through London traffic with the bronze statuettes in the car, unload them, and lay them out on tables.

Sometimes the tables were not there yet.

His wife Sue became part of the routine, guarding the awards while he parked.

There was a lot of carrying before they discovered the large service lift that ran from street level down to the Great Room.

For the next thirty years, the Ivors were produced as bronze sand castings.

By 2005, small jobbing foundries were disappearing and Mike decided to close his own.

At the same time, BASCA, now The Ivors Academy, asked whether the award could be returned to its original lost-wax appearance from the 1950s.

He said yes, but it would require finding the right foundry.

After two difficult years, they partnered with Tony Buckland at Investacast in 2009.

Investacast began producing the raw lost-wax castings, restoring sharpness and detail closer to the early awards.

To do that properly, they needed a high-quality early example to copy.

They first worked from an award presented to Tony Bennett, kindly loaned by his daughter.

Hazel Underwood judged the result not good enough.

They then borrowed an Ivor presented to Johnny Dankworth in 1957, only the second year of the awards, before quality had deteriorated.

That became the pattern.

Today’s Ivors are faithful replicas of those early lost-wax originals.

The bronze figure of Euterpe stands on a wooden base with an engraved brass plaque.

The raw castings are produced by Investacast.

The detailing and finishing are done by Mike in his workshop in Gloucestershire.

For half a century he has not stood on the stage to receive the award.

He has ensured that when others do, they hold something worthy of the music it represents.