Ghostly Chessmen

These marvellously spooky pieces were created by Steve Moore who told me: Perhaps you can feel the influence of the luminous spooks at the back of my mind when I made them. By rights it should have been Algernon Suit of Armour as the Knight, but I picked Winnie, astride her trusty broomstick. As you know Alf inspired the apparition who takes the role of Rook. Sidney Skull and Crossbones was behind the pawns, and the Queen is loosely modelled on Tilly, although in this manifestation, she takes the form of a vampire complete with flowing dress, fangs and candlestick. For the King I decided on a headless Tudor fellow, standing in front of a tombstone. Finally, in the role of Bishop is a monk, invisible other than for the habit he wears. When I retrieved the figures they had a layer of dust which I thought added a twist of atmosphere, so I didn't polish them up before taking the photos. As far as I know the concept of a set of chess spooks is unique.I made the figures from air hardening clay and used latex moulds around them to cast all 32 pieces from stonecast powder.

Although the apparition figure was based on Alf, Steve said: you can see from the photos he's much less of a friendly character. Note also the chains.