If you are interested in having The Ox permanently please contact the Black Family Estate, saying who you are and what kind of a home you could offer it, and if you represent any particular organisation or public body - although that is not necessary - and someone will be in touch with you.
In 1980 the sculptor Michael Black started work on an Ox for Oxford. Having set up a Trust for a public appeal to raise funds to cast it in bronze, and with plans moving forward with Oxford City Council to have it sited at the bottom of Headington Hill Michael created the full size Ox.
Sadly, it was never cast owing to lack of funds.
Michael Black with the Ox at Wytham Studios, Oxford, 1980s. Photo © the Black Family Estate
However from that time on, every May 1st, until 2019, it was trundled on its full-size wooden cart from Michael’s studio in Wytham, down the Woodstock Road to his house in Chalfont Road, where it was garlanded with spring blossoms, then pulled by a team of volunteers down Polstead Road, over Aristotle Bridge, past a hand painted mock Magdalen Tower, back over the bridge, to become the centrepiece, with a seated May Queen on its back, looking down on the gathered company whilst the Eynsham and Headington Quarry Morris danced the May in. It was joined by large polystyrene Emperors’ Heads held aloft (originally made for the procession to mark the installing of the Heads carved by Michael in the early 1970s around the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford) and was much loved by many.
THE OX has been a familiar sight marking Oxford May Day celebrations over the years and this year welcomed visitors to the Michael Black retrospective exhibition, Chisel Wood Stone, in the Oxfordshire Museum gallery in Woodstock (March-June 2025). It is still currently on exhibition at the Museum gallery entrance.
It was made using a metal armature, scrim and cloth, covered in plaster of Paris. It is secured to the wooden cart and can only stand whilst on the cart -it cannot stand alone. Annually it would benefit from a fresh white-wash and a touch-up of its face markings, along with a new spring garland. It is now seeking a new permanent home. Preferably one that means it can continue to greet or be seen by the public, in a safe place.
If you are interested in having The Ox permanently please contact the Black Family Estate, saying who you are and what kind of a home you could offer it, and if you represent any particular organisation or public body - although that is not necessary - and someone will be in touch with you.
‘We have lots of happy memories of May mornings in the past with Michael with his friends and family,’ say the Eynsham Morris. ‘It would be nice to find a permanent home for the Ox, so he doesn’t go to the knacker’s yard!’