Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhist Statues

The Kathmandu Valley’s artist community has earned a well-deserved reputation for their metal-working expertise and creativity. Even today, the Valley’s best metal-smiths stand out due to their exceptional skill level. Creating traditional  Buddhist statues demands patience, time, and top-notch abilities from everyone involved. The process begins with lost-wax casting to produce the basic form. Craftsmen then refine and add details to the raw casting through chasing – a technique where they use a sharp tool to hammer the statue’s surface. This method allows them to create intricate elements such as crowns, hair, fabric patterns, jewelry, and the crucial facial features that bring the divine image to life.

Even the smooth parts get a final touch-up with gentle hammer taps on the surface. Once the copper body is done in fine detail, gilders step in to fire-gild the whole surface using a mix of mercury and gold. They then heat it up to make the mercury evaporate leaving the gold stuck to the body for good. After that, a burnisher takes over rubbing the entire piece with an agate tool stuck to the end of a stick. The statue is then ready for the artist, who will finish it off and add embellishments in different colors – sometimes using expensive pigments made from crushed lapis lazuli and gold as the iconography requires.