Butter sculpture is the unique sculptural art of the Tibetan nationality. Its raw material is delicate and white butter, and the auxiliary materials are various kinds of mineral substances. At the beginning of winter each year, monks cut the pure butter into thin slices, rub them evenly after adding some ice water, and then mix in all kinds of ore dyes, to make colorful exotic flowers and rare herbs, pavilions, fowls and beasts, and various characters. At the butter sculpture festival of lanterns on January 15 of the Tibetan lunar calendar, the vivid and exquisite butter sculpture works will be displayed.

Although the butter sculpture is simply called “hua” (flowers), it displays rich contents, ornamentation and modeling. The modeling technique is vivid and remarkably true to life. The first butter sculpture was created by Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and was consecrated to the Sakyamuni Buddha in the Jokhang Monastery.

The process of making the butter sculpture is very difficult. The basic raw material is the butter eaten by the plateau pastoralists every day. This kind of butter is very soft, easy to melt and difficult to save for very long, so it can be produced only in the cold season. The butter sculpture for the lantern show will be prepared each winter. To prevent the colored butter from melting in the hands, monks should make it in subzero cold rooms, and, from time to time, should also plunge their hands into basins of cold water with lumps of ice to ensure their own body heat doesn’t cause melting. They thus make the butter sculpture with almost numb fingers. Without pious hearts, it is almost impossible to imagine completing this challenging artistic creation.

In the frame form, butter sculpture inherits the fine, complex and deft characteristics of Tibetan Buddhist art of compactness. At the butter sculpture festival of lanterns each year, the exquisite butter sculpture works are unusually brilliant; with the addition of the slow and solemn rhythm of music, they show an elegant, solemn, mysterious and holy beauty.