The Study of Buddhist Sculptures from Japan and China Based on Wood Identification

Mechtild Mertz (1, 2, 3) , Takao Itoh (4, 5, 3)

1 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2 UMR 8155 - Centre de recherche sur les civilisations chinoise, japonaise et tibétaine
3 RISH - Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere
4 Kyoto University
5 Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

The present study of wooden Buddhist sculptures from Japan and China is based on the microscopic identification of the wood species. Research on the wood species of Japanese Buddhist sculptures has a forty-year history. In the 1960s Kohara Jirō, a wood anatomist and pioneer of wood identification of Buddhist sculpture, identified the wood species of 615 sculptures. Based on these results, a first attempt was made to describe the evolution of wood species utilized from the Asuka to the Heian period, also taking into account regional differences. Presently, this research is being continued and completed by research teams in Japan composed of art historians and wood anatomists. Buddhist sculptures from China, however, have not yet been investigated in this way. In fact, a great number of Chinese wooden Buddhist sculptures are preserved in Western museums. For the present study we were allowed to collect samples for wood identifications of more than thirty-five Chinese Buddhist sculptures from several European museums. Wood identification and the discussion regarding the utilization of various wood species may provide historians of East Asian art worldwide with new insights and valuable information concerning the era, location, and spiritual context in which the sculptures were made.

Mots clés: Sculpted wood; Buddhist Art; Wood Anatomy; Japan; China; Wood Identification

Domaines: Art et histoire de l'art; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Mechtild Mertz, Takao Itoh. The Study of Buddhist Sculptures from Japan and China Based on Wood Identification. Janet G. Douglas, Paul Jett, and John Winter. Scientific Research on the Sculptural Arts of Asia Proceedings of the Third Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art, 3, Archetype Publications in association with the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, pp.198-204, 2007, Scientific Research on the Sculptural Arts of Asia - Proceedings of the Third Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art, 978-1-904982-20-3. ⟨hal-02994701⟩