In 2000,
Nick was commissioned by the Jamyang Buddhist Centre
in London to carve in Bath (Monks Park) limestone a
life-size statue of a Paranirvana Buddha (Buddha on
his deathbed) for a new courtyard garden. Here he describes
the process of making the statue.
“The brief was to carve a statue 6 ft long
which followed the traditional Tibetan proportion system
in which the statue length is divided into 125 units
(sor) and all the other parts of the body are in proportion
to this (i.e. the upper leg is 25 sor long, the head
is 12.5 sor high and so on).
I sought advice from two English sculptors, Denise
and Peter Griffin who had studied traditional Nepalese
and Tibetan sculpture in Nepal and India. I also studied
examples in London museums and from photographs of
traditional Buddhist sculpture.
I first made a half size model in clay. I modelled
the unclothed figure in buff clay to achieve the correct
proportions and then added the robes in red clay. In
this way I could model the red clay and immediately
see if I was cutting too deep into the body. Once the
clay model was complete and approved by the Centre,
a plaster cast was made using a waste mould process.
The half size plaster cast was then used as the maquette
for the full size stone carving and scaled up using
callipers and proportional measures.
The carving took ten weeks to carve and is now set
on a plastered brick plinth in the courtyard. It was
completed in March 2001. Although originally envisaged
to be seen as a stone carving, the Centre now plan
to paint and gild the statue in the traditional Tibetan
way.
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