The Latchford Collection # 27:
Another of the smaller bronze artifacts amongst the Douglas Latchford collection on display at his London apartment in 2014, is this mysterious male figure, sitting on a top shelf alongside a ceremonial bronze conch shell and stand. It obviously impressed Latchford enough for him to include it in his 2004 scholarly book, Adoration and Glory, which highlighted a few bronze pieces among a lot of impressive stone sculptures. The figure has tiny snail-curls on his head often seen on images of the Buddha, though his decorative jewelry might suggest a royal court figure rather than a deity. He is holding a container in both hands and is sat in a style similar to the revered statue of Jayavarman VII in the National Museum. It’s a mystery as to his identity. The book description provides no provenance at all and assigns ownership to the Radcliffe Collection, which was merely a useful cover for being part of Latchford’s personal collection. Establishing himself at the center of a looting and trafficking network, from his base in Bangkok, Latchford dispatched thousands of pieces of Khmer art direct to private collectors, auction houses and museums around the world. He kept some of the best pieces for himself, most of them at his London apartment, while maintaining his monetary fortune in offshore trusts in Jersey, exposed by the Pandora Papers in 2021, a year after his death. The American courts had indicted him on various charges in 2019 but by then, he was too ill to face the music.
The description for this bronze from Adoration and Glory is as follows: This charming figure is shown seated on a small rectangular base holding a vessel with a pointed lid in his two raised hands. The hair is represented in tiny curls surrounding a low conical tiered form. A third eye marks the forehead. The figure is clothed in a sampot can kpin and lavishly adorned with a pectoral (ornamental breast plate) with three back pendants, earrings, armlets, bracelets, anklets, and an ornate belt with pendants that match those on the pectoral. The identity of this tiny image is not easy to establish, but the face is reminiscent of larger portraits considered to represent Jayavarman VII. The third eye was considered an additional sign of purity on a Buddhist image during the Bayon period. The quality of casting is superb, rendering the facial features and jewelry in minute detail. The figure was lost-wax cast upside down integrally with the base. Two loops underneath the base served as a sprue and gate during the casting process, and later were used to attach the piece to a larger element. [Extract from Adoration and Glory].https://www.facebook.com/andy.brouwer.71
