Tibetan Butter Sculpture

Butter sculpture is a distinctive offering art of Tibetan Buddhism, said to originate in the legend of King Songtsen Gampo presenting sculpted butter flowers before the Buddha when he wed Princess Wencheng in the Tubo era, later developed into an exacting craft handed down among monks. In the Diqing Tibetan area of Yunnan it serves as a key offering at the great prayer festival of the Gelug monasteries, fashioned and displayed each first month by the monks of Ganden Sumtseling and other temples.

Butter sculpture blends white butter with mineral pigments into a palette of coloured butters; monks work in a cold room, shaping by hand to build up scenes from the Buddha's life, flowers, birds, figures and pavilions layer upon layer on a wooden tray. Since butter melts at the touch of warmth, the sculptor must plunge the hands into ice water again and again through the winter's work, so that each petal and leaf emerges in finest detail.

Butter sculpture unites modelling, painting, colour and religious narrative and is counted among the "three wonders" of Tibetan Buddhist art, holding real value for the study of Tibetan religious art, festival ritual and the handcraft tradition of the monasteries.