Early Tibetan Clay Sculpture

Few people will consider clay an important artistic medium in Tibetan art. Nevertheless, in Tibet clay has always been the sculptural material par excellence. Besides the mass-produced votive objects, the so-called tsha tsha found all over Tibet, many of the large-scale sculptures in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are actually made of the same material. The main substance of these sculptures is dried clay (and not, as is often claimed, stucco, which would be far more resistant), a material that has been used employing varying techniques throughout the history of Tibetan art.

Large-scale clay sculptures of the highest quality are particularly characteristic for the earliest Tibetan monuments preserved. This fact can quite easily be explained by the abundance of clay sculpture in almost all neighbouring regions during the time when Tibet was absorbing Buddhism from India as well as – albeit to a far lesser degree – China and Central Asia. During the second half of the first millennium of our era major sculptures were being made of clay in all these regions, those preserved in the famous cave of Dunhuang in the Gansu corridor in China being the most well known.

This article summarizes how frequently clay was used as sculptural material throughout Tibetan history and the techniques employed. The brief survey certainly does not do justice to the importance of clay as a sculptural medium in Tibet, but the highlights introduced may be sufficient to prove that these sculptures are an important aspect of Tibetan art that deserves attention. This is particularly true as the sculptures often represent the main topic of a temple’s decoration and the monument thus can only be understood by taking them into account.

• In Aziatische Kunst 33 (2) 2003: p. 2-15.