Beautiful Mandalay Crowned Buddha Statue
AGE: – 19th – early 20th Century
CONSTRUCTION: – Teak wood
HEIGHT: – 64cm
WIDTH: – 39cm
DEPTH: – 27cm
WEIGHT: – 10 kg.
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A Beautiful Mandalay Crowned Buddha Statue with full gilding is seen here dressed in formal royal regalia wearing a seven-tiered crown with a wooden pointed finial. The head is flanked by decorative metal flanges with large earrings and jewelry denoting his kingly statues. A floral thayo lacquer scrolling pattern decorates the base on the front of the statue, the flanges, and the crown.
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The robe is decorated with a diamond-shaped pattern in thayo lacquer with green mosaics embedded within each diamond. The eyes are inlaid with white marble. A rosette of coloured glass beads depicting jewels decorates the centre back and front of the body. The right-hand mudra is in the earth-touching position, (referred to as Bhumisparsa mudra).
This Mandalay Buddha incorporates some of the features seen in the Royal King Jambhupati Buddha Statues from Arakan and some crowned Shan-style Buddha statues. The intricately detailed thayo lacquer with glass mosaics is referred to as Hman-zi Shwei-cha or glass inlay technique and was a characteristic of Burmese art art and architecture from the 18th to the 20th century.
It is a technique in which the lacquer paste is thickened with additional materials such as cow dung ash to create areas of raised decorations on a flat surface. Areas within the thayo lacquer design are highlighted with fragments of colored glass cut in various shapes. Glass used in Hman-zi Shwei-cha became smaller and finer in the latter half of the 19th century compared to the earlier times due to the sophistication and availability of more powerful glass-cutting machines from the West.
