The Royal Bronzes exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art wrapped up yesterday, but Zen Tower received a special guided tour on Saturday. More than 200 bronze and stone artifacts of Buddhism and Hinduism were on display, on loan from Cambodia.
To get the audience to think and discuss some of the artifacts, the tour guide would frequently ask, “What do you notice about this piece?” and the audience would call out various observations.
Although the pieces were hundreds, and sometimes more than a thousand years old, you could see the improvements in the casting methods (frequently referred to as lost-wax) and in the details of the individual pieces.
The lost-wax method involved making a kind of skeleton for the figure, then wrapping wax around the skeleton to form the shape of the final product. Various details would be made at this point. Then the wax object was packed with sand and clay. Next, the object would be heated up, and the wax would melt out of the object, leaving a hollow space, where bronze (melted copper and tin or lead) would be poured into the cast. The cast would then be removed, and the rough figure would be ready for polishing and cleaning.
The craftsmen who made these objects were often solicited by kings, and while there might have been a financial opportunity to make such exquisite sculptures, the craftsmen clearly had to have a devotion as well.
