A WORLD famous sculptor who created pieces for a number of Oxford Colleges as well as the Beijing Olympics has died aged 82.

Anthony Stones, who emigrated to Oxford from New Zealand in 1983 was president of the British Society of Portrait Sculptors and is known for a series of iconic statues around the world. 

Mr Stones, whose studio was based in Northmoor, in West Oxfordshire, also had a career in TV in New Zealand and some success as a children's author in the UK.

From the early 2000s he split much of his time travelling with his wife Lily Feng between Oxfordshire and Beijing, where he completed a series of sculptures lining the route to the Bird's Nest Stadium - built for the Olympic games in 2008. 

His statues of former New Zealand prime minister Peter Fraser outside the government buildings in Wellington and his monument to Jean Batten at Auckland Airport in the 1980s took his work into the public eye.

He also developed a plan for Broad Street, including a statue of Apollo on a fountain in the centre and another one of Roger Bacon outside the Bodleian Library.

The plans were shown to various bodies in the city and Oxford Preservation Trust were expected to draw up a brief but it never came to fruition.

Mr Stones always expressed sadness that his vision never came to light. 
Anthony Stones was born in Glossop, Derbyshire in 1934, where he grew up with his parents before going to Manchester Regional College of Art.

After completing his course he moved to New Zealand with his parents at the age of 18.

Stones' time in New Zealand television would span two decades, and see him rising from set design to management.

He was involved in a range of programmes including musicals, thrillers and current affairs shows. 

From 1978 to 1983, Stones was head of design at South Pacific Television, now TV2, in a management capacity.

Off screen he enjoyed roles as a painter, editor, author and teacher but his main passion was sculpture. 

Mr Stones' biographer Keith Ovenden argued his move to Oxford in 1983 was in search of a "a bigger stage and a more receptive public than New Zealand could offer him."

The sculptor found success in his time in the city, living in Headington Road creating a number of portrait sculptures for Oxford colleges, including one of Sir Isaiah Berlin at Wolfson College. 

In 2010 his bust of Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin - the only British woman to receive the prize - was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of her birth at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and can still be seen today. 

He regularly exhibited at the Turrill Sculpture Garden in Summertown both before and after he moved further afield to Lechlade-on-Thames. 

The garden's director Katherine Shock said he was very supportive of the sculpture garden and encouraged her to go ahead with plans to create it in 1999. 

In 2011 a sculpture garden was named in his honour at Shenyang University, where he was Dean of the Anthony Stones International Sculpture Academy. 
He died in China last month, aged 82.