Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board

hello,

i recently bought this alabaster buddha. i believe it's from mandalay burma.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/mkhulu65/buddha.htm

could someone pls confirm it's a MANDALAY statue? it's about 29cm high and weighs about 4kg.

i realise its nothing special but i particularly like the facial image - serene, almost childlike.

any help most appreciated.

regards

richard tomlinson

Richard, the general character of the image has most of the right qualities for the so-called Mandalay style (most artisans in Mandalay traditionally were ethnic Shan of the Tai group). These features include the shape of the 'usnisha' {the elevation atop the head} and the earth-touching posture or 'bhumisparsa mudra'. The carving is slightly below average and the smile seems a tiny bit more exaggerated than my experience would suggest. Such variances may suggest that yours is a modern copy carved by Shan artisans or their Thai cousins in and around the handicraft center of Chiangmai, Thailand.

I don't have an alabaster Mandalay Buddha, but here is one done in dry lacquer that's just under three feet high. It probably dates to the first quarter of the 20th century.

Best regards,

Bill H.

hi bill.h

thanks for the feedback.

i bought this from a respected european dealer who assured me the piece is genuine.

that said, without any knowledge of these pieces, i would be foolish to discount your opinion.

i have been unable to source information on the internet that helps assess or evaluate such pieces. knowledge of subtle differences (as you pointed out with the mouth) would help in forming a more valid assessment.

i have no reason to doubt your assessment, nor any reason to doubt the sellers. i am just keen to learn.

regards
rt

RT, if you haven't already, you might wish to take your search for background to sources like the web mall trocadero.com, which has a search feature. Using the keywords 'alabaster Buddha' you'll get more than a half dozen pages of pictures and data. This is not to say that I promote or support the veracity of any particulat dealer over another.

I know that everything I have in my collection that's labeled 'Burmese' actually came from Burma because I bought it when I worked there. I also worked in Thailand for six years and have visited the shops in Chiang Mai and other places where imitation Burmese handicrafts are made. Stone-carving factories around Ayutthaya are the source of some of the better Thai-made images, though mainly reproductions of Khmer statuary. However, many Buddha images available in Thailand are made in Burma and simply smuggled out through the porous border.

Something to keep in mind is that both Thailand and Burma have strong patrimonial laws against the export of Buddha images that actually have been used in temples for worship or which are so accurate in their adherance to the canons of Buddhistic art that they can't be discerned from the 'real thing.' I've heard that Indonesia is a source of Buddha images nowadays, possibly because they are not a Buddhistic country. One thing I believe that may separate a consecrated image from one made for the tourist trade is a coating of dirt, because pious Thai and Burmese alike tend to keep their Buddha images clean with regular ritual washings.

I've been in back rooms in Bangkok where I could have purchased Burmese-style alabaster images that were better-detailed than yours for only about USD 100. Apparently they were 'legal' because the source was known to be making them for export. But that was 20 years ago, and the price may have gone up. It certainly has around the internet.

Good luck,

Bill H.

Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board