Theresa Thompson chisels out the history of the Oxford stone carving brothers

In the mid-19th century two Irish stone carver brothers came to Oxford to work on the new Museum of Natural History. John and James O’Shea were well known for their true-to-life carvings of animals and plants around Dublin.

Their work would entail walking of a morning to the Botanical Gardens, obtaining a plant and bringing it back to the museum to copy. No sketches, no clay models, simply straight on with the carving. Unlike other carvers of the era, their work was never repetitive, always highly creative. In late 1858, James O’Shea began working on the museum façade, and an arc of monkeys appeared, crawling round an arched window.

Controversy soon followed, however, with the primates too close to the debates that were raging at the time around human ancestry; some arguing that O’Shea’s carving was a rendition of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in November 1859. ‘The Great Debate’ on Darwin’s radical ideas took place in June 1860 within the very building the brothers were working on.

The monkeys were turned into cats, the O’Sheas were dismissed, their work incomplete, and before leaving James began carving impromptu parrots and owls over the doorway to caricature the Oxford authorities: thus, the O’Sheas became part of Oxford lore. (The Cat Window, doorway carvings, and interior carvings are still visible today).

In a blow-by-blow account of stone carving in Oxford, Irish artist Sean Lynch’s exhibition at Modern Art Oxford and his accompanying book, he explores this story, as well as looking at museum and display culture, the nature of exhibiting in public space, and social and cultural histories.

The installation includes a stone in the shape of a monkey head found at Mars-ton in 1900, on loan from the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a stone monkey carved for the show by Dublin-based Stephen Burke in the style of the O’Sheas (displayed in the Yard alongside new work by Burke and fellow stone carver Andrew Tanser resulting from a stonemason’s workshop set up at MAO over Easter).

Lynch also includes signage from a chicken shop now occupying the spot in Lambeth, south London, where once stood the Ark — the Tradescant collection of curiosities, which was open to the public in the early 17th century, and later formed the basis for the Ashmolean Museum. Lynch references the dodo, the flightless bird from Mauritius eaten to extinction, that in stuffed form was a prize exhibit at the Tradescant Ark, linking it with ‘Chucky’ the chicken, the shop’s logo.