The Earliest Grand Buddhist Clay Sculpture in Bhutan and the Bhutanese Tradition of Clay Sculpting

The main image of Maitreya, the buddha of the future, in Jampa Temple in Bumthang is probably the earliest grand Buddhist clay sculpture made in Bhutan. The temple, or lhakhang, is named after this statue of Maitreya, who is known as Jampa in Tibetan, and is one of the thirteen temples said to have been built by Songtsen Gampo (c. 605–649), the Tibetan king of the Yarlung dynasty. The temples were believed to have been built to subdue a supine demoness who embodies the Himalayan landscape. A list of the temples describes Jampa Lhakhang as pinning down the left knee of the supine demoness, while Kyerchu Lhakhang, a second of these early temples located in Bhutan, pins down the demoness’s left foot. The main images of both temples, Maitreya in Jampa Lhakhang and Buddha Shakyamuni in Kyerchu Lhakhang, are flanked by sculpted sets of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, a feature common to early temples throughout the Himalayas.1

There are no extant records to identify who made the statues or confirm their seventh-century date, but the practice of working with clay was likely thriving in many parts of Bhutan by the time Songtsen Gampo commissioned these statues. People in this region commonly used its rich deposits of clay minerals for making fireplaces and pottery. Clay was also used for construction as a binder in stone masonry and in building rammed mud walls, as well as for fashioning cultural decorative motifs, figures that adorn houses, and clay masks. The advent of clay as a medium for religious sculpture may not have begun until the construction of Buddhist monuments including the Maitreya and Shakyamuni statues. A century later, the Tibetan king Tri Songdetsen (742–ca. 800) is said to have built many temples, including the Chokhor Lhakhang.2 Its Vairochana sculpture is close in style to the Maitreya in Jampa Lhakhang (fig. 2).

Buddhist cultural activity in Bhutan seems to have waned concurrently with the decline of the Tibetan Empire around the middle of the ninth century, but in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries Buddhist traditions reemerged and expanded. During this time, many Bhutanese and Tibetan Buddhist masters traveled to and within Bhutan, actively cultivated patrons, and founded temples throughout the region. These establishments often included clay statues as significant objects in their shrines, as seen with the central buddha figure in the Samarzingkha Lhakhang in Thimphu and Khewang Lhakhang in Phobjikha (fig. 3). The earliest datable clay works of this period are the clay sculptures in Tamshing Lhakhang; texts identify the dates of their creation as 1502 and 1503, when the temple founder hired artists from central Tibet.3

Formation of the Tradition

The art of clay sculpture gained new importance after the unification of Bhutan in the middle of the seventeenth century by Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel (1594–1651), who was considered to be both the incarnation of Tsangpa Gyare (1161–1211), the founder of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and a scion of the Ralung monastic establishment which Tsangpa Gyare founded.4 Embroiled in a conflict with the Tsangpa ruler of Tibet, Zhabdrung left his vibrant religious center of Ralung in 1616 and went into exile, building his base for Drukpa faith and culture in the western valleys of Bhutan. Zhabdrung learned the art of sculpting through his teachers, among them Lhawang Lodro and Taktsepa Pekar Wangpo, whom he invited to join him in his new base. He also founded workshops where monastics were taught clay and metal sculpture production alongside other arts. When Zhabdrung took control of a preexisting fortress in Thimphu in 1641, he commissioned a sculptor named A’u Drung to help enlarge it and prepare its inner contents;5 the new building was named Tashicho Dzong, and it became the heart of Bhutanese religious and secular administration.

After the founder’s passing, the Fourth Druk Desi Tenzin Rabgye (1638–1696) further systematized the thirteen traditional arts and crafts (zorik chuksum), integrating some of the arts into the state monastic curriculum. A trained artist himself, Tenzin Rabgye was also a major patron of the arts and oversaw the renovation and establishment of many key historical sites. He supervised commissions of both local and regional artists to create clay shrine images. To craft images for the shrines at Punakha Dzong, Seula Gonpa, and Bondey Lhakhang, the master sculptor Trulku Zing (d. ca. 1674) was invited to Bhutan from Tibet, where he had received commissions from the Tenth Karmapa Choying Dorje (1604–1674). Considered to be an artist emanation of Maitreya, Trulku Zing was said to create sculptures so efficacious as not to need consecration. Although his clay works survive, including the sculptures attributed to him at Tango Monastery, historians are divided on whether he passed down his artistic tradition to any students.

Yet the names of many important Bhutanese sculptors of the past survive.6 Chumey Choje, Druk Chophel, Tenzin Gyeltsen, Ngawang Sherab, and Ngawang Phuntsho are all said to have propagated the art of clay sculpture, especially by creating Buddhist statues under state patronage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bhutan’s foremost clay artist, Hephu Trulku Sangag Gyeltsen (ca. 1600–1661) (fig. 4), established clay sculpture as a distinct skill of the Hephu religious community in Paro.

Despite a catastrophic fire that destroyed Hephu Monastery in the 1860s, Bhutanese clay sculpture continued to thrive through the Hephu lineage and the surrounding community (fig. 5). In the twentieth century, two Hephu artists, Damchoe and Pelden, were commissioned as the primary sculptors for an elaborate Buddhist tshokshing, a three-dimensional depiction of an assembly of masters and deities as objects of refuge, now housed in the National Museum at Paro.7 The Third King of Bhutan instructed Damchoe (1921–1995) and Pelden to set up a sculpture academy in Tashigang in 1967. This academy elevated the Bhutanese art of clay sculpture to a new level and produced many great contemporary sculptors, including Omtong (1945–2001), Chagdor Tshering, Karma, and others. In 1969, the academy moved to Thimphu, where it continues to flourish as a center for training young Bhutanese clay sculptors, many of whom have exercised their talents in other parts of the world, including Pelden’s son, Nyima Dorji. Students also learn clay sculpting at the Trashiyangtse Institute of Zorig Chusum, founded in 1997, and on a more limited basis at the privately run Choki Traditional Arts School in Thimphu, established in 1999.

Iconographic Programs

Reflecting the religious and cultural trends, the subjects of clay sculptural works in Bhutan have also gone through significant changes. While early clay imagery focused on a buddha figure surrounded by eight bodhisattvas, by the first half of the second millennium clay compositions increasingly portrayed Guru Padmasambhava with two consorts, the Eight Manifestations of Padmasambhava, and religious masters. The twentieth century also witnessed a significant increase in the construction of gigantic clay figures of Padmasambhava, intricate images of tantric deities, and lineage masters. Today, it is quite common to find new shrines that house a central figure of Buddha Shakyamuni flanked by Padmasambhava and Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel.

The Process of Making Clay Sculptures

Unfired clay was formerly the most common material for sculpture in Himalayan cultural areas.8 In the traditional Bhutanese method, artists make sculptures from clay mixed with paper usually made from daphne plant and water. To increase the potency, longevity, and auspiciousness of the image, sometimes they add medicinal and sacred substances, such as saffron and camphor, to the mix. Some patrons also include precious stones such as coral, turquoise, and pearls, which are powdered and added to the clay in order to generate greater merit from the creation of the statue. Paper provides fiber that holds the unfired clay together. Sculptors distinguish various types of clay depending on its qualities, usually referred to as basic, medium, and high-quality clay. Artists use coarser clay for creating a basic form of the statue and finer clay for the thin outer layer to articulate more refined shapes and surface details.

They gradually build a hollow inner form of a statue with coiled clay strips, shaped and thinned by hand. Each strip is air-dried, and a new coil is built up until the basic figure, without arms and a head, is complete. Sometimes, a lotus base is made separately, especially if the sculpture is large. Artists use special wooden tools to produce surface details, polishing the fine clay until it looks like a burnished surface (fig. 6).

Then the artists create arms, inserting a metal wire like an arm bone into a clay shape, and mold fingers by the same method, shaping them using their wooden tools, and attach the arms to the figure. If the sculpture is large, they traditionally use a wooden armature to secure the arms to the sculpture.

Employing iconometric proportions, similar to the proportions applied in thangka painting, the artists shape the figure’s head separately. The process for modeling the head is the same as for the basic figure. The sculptors first shape the form of the face, then work on the finer surface details and polish it with tools. They mold the rest of the head and attach it to the body of the sculpture, smoothing the seam to eliminate any unevenness. The artists make ornaments such as crowns, armlets, bracelets, necklaces, and lotus petals for the throne base separately, often using beeswax molds to ensure uniformity, and then attach them to the statue. 

Finally, a painter completes the sculpture, with the face and the eyes as the last steps in the painting process. The statue’s hollow cavity is filled with consecrated materials (zung). This signifies the activation of the image, usually accompanied by a consecration ritual.

All clay statues follow specific iconographic models and are traditionally decorated and painted. Large statues are raised on a base formed from clay bricks, and a wooden armature secures them to the wall. Important large sculptures are usually dressed in brocade garments and serve as a temple’s central image and the focus of ritual and worship activities.