Buddha Statues, Antiques & Jade Sculpture

commissioned in Yangon or Mandalay Myanmar, the best knowledge is probably available at Mandalay. Sculptures available are Buddha standing, with crossed legs, walking, sitting, sleeping. also old marble figures are available and other antiques, just deal with a government licensed shop otherwise you will run into trouble when leaving the country. But no credit card and practically no banks, they have a state bank which does some foreign currency trading but since the US sanctions all came flat. You need dollars in cash, some also take Euro but the preference is dollars, they also wont take Baht, Singapore dollars or whatever. For the daily needs change some money with a money changer in the Bogyoke Market

Buddha antique statues are often high priced in particular when there is real evidence that they are genuine old, since there are many fake items its necessary to be very careful when buying any, on top of it almost no country where they are available allows to export them.

Buddha sculpture	Some history around a Buddha sculpture The Chen La style appears at several sites, and follows several phases during the seventh and eighth centuries, declining by degrees into a lesser exuberance. The phases are named after the major architectural sites where they occur Sambor, Prei Kmeng, Prasat Andet, Kompong Preah. At Han Chei there is a small brick tower faced with sandstone, probably the last of the pre-Angkor phase. It is small, its ornament has shrunk to pure foliage and its pillars have diminished capitals, though under the architraves are some figurative pieces of iconography. This whole somewhat un enterprising style of architecture depends on its fine relief sculpture, and indeed
sculpture was the major art during the whole Fou Nan-Chen La epoch. Among the few great stone icons which have survived are some of the world's outstanding masterpieces, while the smaller bronzes reflect the same sophisticated and profound style. No sculpture was discovered at Oceo, though we do know that sculpture was made at that period in Fou Nan because Buddhist statues were sent to China ; and Chinese sources refer to the inhabitants of Fou Nan casting bronze statues of their gods. In the year 503, for example, King Kaundinya Jayavarman sent a coral Buddha to the emperor of China, and we hear of a queen of Fou Nan erecting a bronze image 'encrusted with gold'. We can be sure that such works were part of a flourishing tradition of art. No doubt there was much carving in wood, and probably painting too, though we know nothing of it. Where such a distinguished style of linear relief is found there must have been pictorial art as well.
The first surviving Buddha statues come from the hill Phnom Da, the 'acropolis' of the then capital of Fou Nan, Angkor Borei. They belong to the early sixth century, a period when the state of Fou Nan was coming under pressure from Chen La. The king to whose reign they belong was Rudravarman, whose patron deity was Vishnu. The statues are Vaishnava. Some represent Vishnu himself in a characteristic form wearing a tall mitre, with his four or eight arms supported on a frame left in the stone of the block. Like the great majority of Fou Nan-Chen La images they are carefully worked from the back as well as the front. The faces are markedly Indochinese. On at least one of them there is a striking depiction of individual muscles bulging on the shoulders, breast and arms, quite unlike the usual smooth rotundity of the limbs of most sculpture of the Indianizing tradition. Romano - Hellenic influence, Buddha statues
already established during the second to fourth centuries and in the north-west of the Indian sub-continent had penetrated to this remote region. A striking Vaishnava image from the same period is that of Krishna performing one of his chief miracles, holding aloft in one hand the mountain Govardhana. Here the image was most likely a 'grotto icon', meant to be placed in the narrow stone cell of a temple. The figure, its braced arm, and the mountain, though all standing out distinctly, are completely engaged with the background.
Cambodian relief art So the sculpture is virtually a relief, but a relief of such great depth that the ground plays no role in the image. This effect is characteristic and illuminating. Most old Indian sculptures are in the form of massively protuberant relief, and in this the Krishna follows Indian tradition. The fact that so many of the earlier and the later Fou Nan-Chen La sculptures are carefully cut from both sides and back might mislead a spectator into imagining that they were carved as true full-round sculpture. This is not so. Even free-standing they are still relief, the figures conceived on a rhomboid section, organized so as to present a clear frontal plane, with emphatically receding but distinctly visible side surfaces. The bodies show marked ridge-lines dividing the side surfaces from the frontal surface; and all the surfaces are cut as subtly undulating continuities. The deep side surfaces give them a vivid plastic presence; the surface continuity gives them their sensuous vitality. These qualities, however much they may be overlaid by decorative schematics in later times, are what give all of Cambodian relief art its special virtue.

Later the Fou Nan-Chen La sculptures become more numerous.

Outstanding among them is a male deity with a horse's head probably of the sixth century, found at Kuk Trap. The figure has a slightly dehanche posture, and at the side of one hip there is a big bow of drapery, which is obviously derived from a similar motif common on the sculptures of Mathura, in western India, during the second and third centuries An. Another very Indian-like figure is the torso of a female deity, in a markedly dehanche posture, found at Sambor hei Kuk (III. 18). The breasts are round, with marked cup-like top surfaces, far more characteristic of India than the sloping breasts of other early Cambodian female sculptures. The best of these is perhaps the splendid Lakshmi from Koh Krieng, probably made in the early part of the seventh century. The majestic goddess standing in a symmetrical, frontal posture makes no attempt to seduce the mind with smiling face or a `hippy' pose. Nevertheless, the surface of the stone is carved with an intense sensual affection, for the gods and goddesses of Hinduism are meant to be physically adored. 

Myanmar Style Buddha sculpture
 

The still later Lakshmi with its more decorative sinuous linear surfaces, lacks the lively monumentality of the Koh Krieng goddess. The only masculine image which can rival this Lakshmi in its monumentality is the great Harihara - a compound icon of Shiva and Vishnu combined half-and-half - of Prasat Andet.

To buy antiques or a real great Buddha Image

in Singapore or Bangkok is, first, very expensive and second you could run into trouble when leaving the country. In Thailand trouble is on almost for sure when you got real antique Thailand Buddha images or Buddha statues, but the items available are fakes anyway, the sellers only try to cheat.

In Singapore and Thailand about 90% of so called antiques are not antique at all, they are fake, but very good fake and even the certificated is fake, so be careful. If you want to buy a rather expensive item the best is hire a specialist for a few hours and let them check, ask the hotel where you can find one. Very attractive contemporary laughing Buddhist sculptures are made in Myanmar from jade this are almost all the time a fat Buddha. statues and carved from white jade with some other colors visible, usually with some lapis lazuli color and lavender. There are only small

Other Jade Buddha

are made from green jade, but rather seldom since good green jade is prohibitively expensive for larger statues.

Some of the best Jade Buddha can be bought in Myanmar or Burma, there is a so called Yangon Emporium twice per year to sell jade and other  precious stones like rubies, sapphires and plenty of other stones. The place to buy are the jewelry shops at Bogyoke Market in Yangon Myanmar.