Conservators look for missing statue heads

THE hunt is on to find up to seven emperors’ statue heads that once stood in front of an Oxford landmark.

The stone figurines, commissioned by Sir Christopher Wren in the 1660s and known as the Emperor Heads, stand outside the Sheldonian Theatre.

The current set seen outside the theatre are the third generation and it is thought as many as 27 “retired” emperors could still exist.

A team from the University of Oxford has located 20 but now they want to trace the remaining seven to study how they have weathered.

The team believes that some of the statues may be in private hands after tracing one figurine from the original set to the garden of a home in Oxford. Some of the other retired heads can be found at Wadham College and Worcester College in Oxford with others at Harcourt Arboretum, Oxon, and a north Oxford school.

Although they are often referred to as the Emperor Heads, it is not known what the statues represent.

Scott Allan Orr, from the School of Geography and the Environment, said: “We want to use the old heads to try and understand how they have been weathered, how they have been deteriorated by time.

“That way hopefully we can inform the conservation and the management of the heads that we currently have, and other stone buildings around the city.”

The current heads each weigh about a ton and were commissioned from Michael Black, an Oxford sculptor.