The answer to the question

The answer to the question – when will the artifacts returned to Cambodia by the family of the deceased antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford go on display? – is quite simply, we don’t know. To-date, just five out of the 125 pieces that the British-born master-manipulator kept in his own personal art collection in his homes in Bangkok and London, have been returned to their country of origin. His daughter has indicated that all of them will find their way back to Cambodia in time. They have an estimated value of USD50 million. The stand-out artifact among the first batch of repatriated pieces is the unique Shiva and Skanda sculpture that was shown to the media in September 2021. Since then, it has been cleaned, restored and verified by the National Museum’s stone conservators behind the scenes, awaiting its unveiling to the general public. The story behind the work of art is that it was originally part of an eclectic series of statues inside the central chambers of Prasat Krachap, a temple within the Koh Ker complex. It’s dated to the first-half of the tenth century and represents the god of destruction and new beginnings, Shiva and his firstborn son Skanda. Scholars have suggested that the two figures may also portray King Jayavarman IV, Koh Ker’s founder, and his son Harshavarman II, and that Prasat Krachap, festooned with multiple inscriptions and sculptures, was a special temple reserved for the royal family. With the remote Koh Ker complex left virtually forgotten over time, looters descended upon its treasures in the 1970s and 1990s, and from his testimony we know that Toek Tik, aka Lion, and his gang of looters unearthed and removed twelve sculptures from Prasat Krachap in the 1970s and in September 1997. The Shiva and Skanda statue found its way into the tainted hands of Latchford, who boasted about the sculpture’s rarity in his 2004 coffee-table book Adoration & Glory. He indicated it was in a private collection, he just forgot to mention it was his own! Excavation work at Krachap in October 2020 found two small fragments belonging to the statue – a piece of Shiva’s right ear and Skanda’s left arm – which have been reattached and await the statue’s unveiling. Whether the museum is waiting for more treasures to be returned before putting Shiva and Skanda on public display, remains to be seen. Latchford himself, had this to say about the self-same sculpture of Shiva with Skanda in an interview with Apollo Magazine in 2008. It was on display in his London apartment at the time. 'This is spectacular. I was shown a picture of it in pieces in the mid-Eighties. The head of Shiva was off, the arms broken, Skanda's feet broken. I bought it. It arrived in three pieces. Neil Perry-Smith, one of the leading restorers of stone, metal and gold (based in London), put it together. These had been clean breaks, there's no restoration. Go by the wall so you can see Skanda's face - I sum it up in one word: adoration.' For investigators, clean breaks are a tell-tale sign that the artwork may have been intentionally broken, with breaks such as these, along specific, easily repairable points being done to ease transport and future reassembly, when large cumbersome sculptures are removed from their find spots by looters. Whilst Latchford was never found guilty of trafficking in stolen and looted Cambodian antiquities – he died in August 2020 - British art restorer Perry-Smith was arrested in July of last year and charged on 29 counts by US authorities. Let’s take a look at the sculpture itself, dated to the second-quarter of the 10th century. Hewn from a single piece of sandstone, the two figures of Shiva and Skanda are resting on a solid base. Shiva, is sat with a straight back, his right foot on top of his left knee. His arms are in front of his chest offering a sampeah. His sturdy body is bedecked with jewelry, with an intricate necklace, armbands, bracelets and belts around his torso and abdomen – all carved in minute detail and a feature of the Koh Ker sculptors. You can see identical ornamentation on the giant Garuda, Rama and the Wrestling Apes on display at the National Museum. His vertically pleated sampot finishes just above the knee, with an overhanging flap resting on his lap and hiding a belt, knotted at the rear. Under his chin he has three beauty lines around his neck. An incised hairline ending in sharp points at the temples, joins with a beard that forms an inverted V under his mouth. His eyes are wide-open under a pronounced brow-line, with a third eye in the middle of his forehead, a tell-tale sign of Shiva. His lips are full and an upturned moustache appears to offer a smile, while his ears are large and include an elongated open earlobe for the addition of jewelry. The two-tiered diadem is intricately carved with diamond-shaped florets, flowers and pearls and tied at the rear, with a substantial cylindrical jata with horizontal braids topped off by the crescent moon at the front. A rather plump Skanda is decorated in an altogether different fashion. His hair is minimal, suggesting his extreme youth, though his earlobes are extended and host circular earrings resting on his shoulders. He is standing straight and his arms are raised so his hands are gently touching those of his father. He has eleven jewelry bangles on each arm. He also has a necklace with long pendants, as well as simple ankle bracelets. For Skanda’s sampot, an unusually-hemmed belt is decorated with hanging leaf-like pendants. The statue’s measurements are 108 x 63 x 65 centimeters. A truly distinctive and unique piece of Khmer art.

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