From stone to image: Carving Buddha in a changing Myanmar

Pantamaw, the art of carving stone and marble, is one of Myanmar’s oldest traditional crafts. For generations, artisans have cleaved slabs of alabaster from the mountain quarries in Sagyin, which translates to marble, and brought the boulders to local workshops and the streets of Mandalay 30 miles (50 kilometres) south. Pantamaw sculpture dates back to the pre-Bagan era, when the highly refined art form took years of apprenticeship training before craftsmen were considered ready to produce figurines. Grandfathers and grandsons have passed their knowledge down to younger generations, and families have carved a livelihood out of this stone.

But the methods that made the marble-carving workshops of old so unique are being replaced. As the power grid in Myanmar continues to stabilise, the use of electric tools is replacing the traditional hammer and chisel, and government-backed private companies are blowing up the mountainsides to more quickly harvest marble for the increasing demand of Buddha statue shipments abroad. As a result, Buddha statues are being mass-produced and machine-made, and many of the young craftsmen skip learning how to create a statue by hand – the pantamaw practice once considered important. (Courtesy of Myanmar Times)