Ornaments and Figurines

Small resin figurine.

It was in 1844 that the great and the good of Glasgow, then proudly known as Second City of Empire, gathered in solemn state for the unveiling of an equestrian statue in honour of Arthur Wellesley, 1^st Duke of Wellington.

The hero of the battle of Waterloo in 1815 that saw the final defeat of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, other statues and monuments were erected in memory of him throughout the British Isles.

But those civic officials and others who attended the unveiling of the statue in Glasgow would have been surprised to learn that, more than 175 years later, it would have become famous for reasons they could never have imagined.

Sculpted by the Italian artist Carlo Marochetti and located outside the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in the city centre, since about the beginning of the 1980s it has become the target of the unique Glasgow sense of humour that shows scant respect for the great and the good.

This takes the form of the victor of Waterloo’s noble head being capped by a traffic cone – giving him the unflattering soubriquet of ‘Coneheid’.

Listed by the Lonely Planet guide in 2011 in its list of the “top 10 most bizarre monuments on earth”, both the city council and the police have been continually frustrated in attempts to rid themselves of the cone once and for all.

In 2013, with a bill reckoned to be in the region of £10,000 a year to remove it – only for another to just as swiftly and mysteriously reappear – the council drew up a plan to double the height of the plinth.

But this had to be withdrawn in the face of public opposition including a Facebook campaign called “Keep the Cone”.

For the time being at least, ‘Coneheid’ is here to stay –now, merging humour and history, Lang Syne Studios has commissioned this wonderful resin model,ornament,figurine,  of the Duke on his horse, topped by the famous — or should it be infamous–cone!