The Thai tradition of bronze metallurgy is as ancient and sophisticated as
those that originate in Egypt and China. Scholars still dispute whether bronze
technology was invented in the Middle East and spread easterwardly, eventually
diffusing throughout the ancient world; or whether technological flowering of
the “Bronze Age” was the product of independent discovery and development
at various points, Thailand among them, from the Mediterranean to the South
China Sea.
Nonetheless, not only is there archeological evidence for bronze production
in the north-eastern plateau region of Thailand that dates back to the middle
of the second millennium B.C., but a very substantial portion of the metal artifacts
produced over the millennia of this archeological record consist of ornaments
cast by the hollow lost-wax method.
By the Dvaravati period in the 7th century A.D. these lost wax techniques were
being used in the Menan delta of Thailand to cast remarkable effigies of the
Buddha, bringing into Buddhist art an entirely original image, produced for
the first time in bronze. By the Sukhothai period the properties of the bronze
medium were fully exploited to express the new aesthetic of Thai art.
Today, the casting of Buddhist images by the lost-wax method continues as a
direct heritage of the techniques employed in Buddhist art since the Dvaravati
period. Despite some modern adaptations - the use of electric bellows, plaster
of Paris, and steel pins as chaplets, for example - the artisans still employ
the principles of bronze metallurgy used in Thailand for over a millenium.
