Teaching Before a Floral Aureole

Viewing notes

A viewer's written impression — not a buyer review or first-hand record

This wood-toned seated figure teaches before a carved floral aureole. Beneath an ornate crown over deep-blue curls, the figure sits in full lotus on a lotus pedestal, both hands raised before the chest with fingertips meeting in a gesture of quiet exposition. Behind rises a great leaf-shaped aureole, gathering to a flame-like point, its whole surface carved with blooming lotuses and scrolling foliage inside a beaded border. The robes spill over the pedestal's edge in layered waves. Below stands no ordinary base but a multi-tiered hexagonal altar: railings, lotus medallions and beaded pillars stepping in tier upon tier, every face carved yet never crowded. Warm in tone and sumptuous in its density of carving, the piece suits enshrinement whole at a shrine's main position or the centre of a display, where it forms a small altar world of its own.