Art Making

Iconometry means the measurement of icons or religious images. Especially in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, detailed manuals exist that use precise proportional measurements to standardize the iconography of major deities, and maintain their correct proportions, regardless of scale. These proportions are commonly expressed visually in artist manuals as iconometric grids.

A thangka is a Tibetan hanging scroll, usually painted on cotton, and then mounted in a silk brocade mount. Thangkas can also be textiles woven or assembled in the appliqué technique. Thangkas are often kept rolled up around a wooden dowel affixed to the bottom end of the silk mounting, which also helps keep the scroll flat when hung. Almost all thangkas show religious subjects. Similar paintings produced in Nepal are called “paubha.”

Religious painting, usually on cloth, in the form of a hanging scroll.

An illuminated manuscript is one that is adorned with images, designs, and decorative text. Unlike an “illustrated” text, the images in an illuminated text don’t necessarily show scenes from the story of the text.

Appliqué is a technique of sewing patches of cloth, often silk or felt, onto a base to create a design or image. Used to make thangkas, carpets, and clothing, this technique allows for the creation of large-scale images, often hung from monastery walls or displayed on mountainsides as part of communal festivals and rituals. While the image may be designed by a Buddhist master, women are often involved in the creation of appliqués.

Kesi is a type of silk weaving known from China and eastern Central Asia, originally associated with the Sogdian and Uyghur peoples. Kesi uses raw silk for the warp and boiled silk of various colors for the weft, producing vivid blocks of color. As the finished surface has a carved-like effect, giving the textile a three-dimensional quality, the technique became known as kesi, which literally means “carved silk.” By the early thirteenth century, the Tanguts employed this luxury medium for the creation of Tibetan Buddhist icons, which would be emulated by other courts, such as the Mongols, Chinese, and Manchus.

The lost-wax technique is a metal casting method used in many Asian cultures. First, the sculptor shapes an image out of beeswax. Then layers of clay are applied to the wax model, from fine to coarse, creating a mold, usually in several parts. When the clay mold is heated, the clay hardens and the wax is drained out. The metalworker then pours molten metal into the empty space of the mold through the same channels the wax was poured out. When the metal has cooled and hardened, the clay mold is broken off, revealing the rough metal statue inside. This statue is often then polished, chiseled, combined with parts that were cast separately, gilded, inlaid with precious substances, and painted.

Repoussé is a metal-working technique in which an artisan hammers the back side of a sheet of metal, indenting it outward to create an image in relief on the reverse face.

In Tibetan Buddhism, a tsatsa is a small sculpture created by pressing clay into a mold. Tsatsas can depict deities, stupas, auspicious signs, and more. Some tsatsas have medicinal plants, or the cremated ashes of loved ones mixed into the clay and taken to various sacred sites to generate merit for their better rebirth. In Newar context, a grain of rice is added. Tsatsas are created to generate religious merit and are often consecrated and then placed within stupas, or made by pilgrims and devotees and left at sacred sites. Tibetans have been creating tsatsas since around the eleventh century, and tsatsa making remains a common practice among lay devotees today.

Engraving is the process of incising lines, patterns, or writing into the surface of an object, such as a metal or wooden sculpture, or natural surface, such a stone.

Papier-mâché is a sculpting technique that uses wet paper mixed with an adhesive. The paper can either be pulped and used to form a sculptable mass around a wire frame, or spread in strips over a pre-made backing. When the paper dries it forms a hard, light surface. Many Himalayan temple images and cham masks were made from papier-mâché, although due to the perishable nature of the material, fewer of these survive than sculptures in stone or metal.