Stone Sculpture Carving in India

There is a lot of very difficult work that goes into the carving of one of Lotus Sculpture's granite statues.  In this section we will out line the process of carving and how we get from a raw piece of stone to one of our magnificent stone sculptures!

The process is mainly in three separate parts; 1. Acquiring and cutting of the stone 2. The rough cut of the sculpture 3. and carving and filing of the details of the piece. 

Acquiring and Cutting the Raw Stone
The artists must first obtain a large stone by going to the stone quarry where the large stones are harvested.  It is very difficult to find a large enough stone to carve a large piece of over 6 feet.  Most larger pieces of stone in the quarry have cracks in them. 

 


The original stone for this raw stone which will eventually be a 6 foot Buddha weighs 8,000 pounds

If a crack is undetected by an artist and the carving is started the sculpture will often break during the carving process. 

This large 7 foot piece of stone was going to be a standing Hanuman statue.  There was a crack that was undetected at the top of the piece and the top piece broke off the stone as you can see by the outline of the Hanuman statue on the stone.

Click on the pictures to view enlarged images

The raw stone usually weighs about 2.5 times the amount of the finished sculpture.  For a Buddha statue that weighs 4000 pounds when completed the raw stone weighs approximately 10,000 pounds.  Thus a large crane is used to move the stone.  The cranes are rented by the artist by the hour. 

  Click on the pictures to view enlarged images

Not all sculptures are 6 feet tall!  When the artists need to cut the stone to make smaller pieces they use many small chisels inserted into carved holes in the stone.
They then use a large sledgehammer to gradually hammer in each of the small chisels into the stone.  This eventually causes a crack in the stone. 

A small crack forms.
They pry the blocks apart.
Then admire their work!

Click on the pictures to view enlarged images

Once the artist has the raw piece of stone it is shaped into a block that can be worked with.  They use large cutting chisels designed to break off large chunks of rock to shape the rock. 

Click here to go to the next step of the process;
The rough cut of the sculpture>>>

 
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