MANDALAY — Though it was midnight at the Sintae Monastery, the light and heat emanating from the grounds rivaled the searing high noons of the lowland summer.
Around 300 men, animated and drenched with sweat, worked at a set of 33 furnaces, laid out in the sprawling compound in Mandalay’s south. Noxious metal fumes, plumes of ash and officious shouts filled the stifling air.
In the center of the makeshift foundry, a group of men prepared to pour the molten bronze into a cast. Sunk into the ground is a giant mold of their impending masterpiece, a massive bronze bell to be hung at the Shwe Taung Sar Pagoda in Dawei.
Marking the 250th anniversary of the pagoda, the project’s benefactors include Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, whose family donated about five tons of bronze. The Burma Army commander-in-chief, who was raised in Dawei, also paid for the complete gilding of Shwe Taung Sar’s structures and donated a set of golden umbrellas last year.
The people of Dawei donated their own bronze and copper in the form of trays, cutlery, cookwares and flower vases taken from household shrines, said U Tun Kyi, the president of the pagoda’s trustee committee, who was at Sintae Monastery to pray for the successful casting of the bell.
“We received about 4.5 tons of bronze, brass and copper wares. Another two donors from Myeik and Kawthaung donated about ten tons,” he said.
The finished product will be 17 feet high and weigh a shade under 20 tons, well above the 16 tons planned by the trustees. Artisans will decorate the bell’s body with floral patterns and mythical creatures.
The bell itself will be the largest made by Burmese bronze casting artists this century, the scope of the project exceeded only by the 98 ton Mingun bell and the 42 ton bell constructed for King Thayarwaddy, built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The nearest recent rival to the Shwe Taung Sar’s bell was also built by Mandalay artisans in 2008, weighing 14 tons and eight feet in height, which was eventually donated to the Global Vipassana Pagoda in the Indian city of Mumbai.
As dawn lit the sky, each furnace was ready to pour, and at the command of the master artisan, groups of four carried blazing clay crucibles to the edge of the hollow mold, gingerly pouring the bronze into the pit.
“Pouring the molten metal is very important step for casting,” said U Than Zaw, one of the leaders of the craftsmen. “It needs to be poured carefully and continuously, not with force but not too slow either. It’s all about the timing and unity of the casting team.”
Pouring is an important step for the bronze casters, with the quality of the end product depending on a rigid system of teamwork. Timing is crucial, and there cannot be any gaps between smelting teams.
“If we don’t pour continuously the molten metal will crystallized separately, which will result in a cracked sound for the bell,” Than Zaw said.
After two hours, the pour is finished, and the men cover the mold with red clay. After one month, the artisans will unearth the bell, polish it and officially hand it over to the Shwe Taung Sar Pagoda’s trustees.
The trustee committee took about a year to collect the metal for the bell, with the bronze casters needing eight months to create the design, fashion the mold, build the furnaces and refine the copper and brass alloys collected from members of the public and the pagoda’s benefactors.
Despite normally competing for business, all the bronze casters working in Mandalay’s Tampawaddy quarter set aside their rivalries and worked in unity to finish the massive project.
Tampawaddy’s significance in Burmese culture stretches back hundreds of years to the reign of King Bodawpaya (1782-1819), who granted bronze artisans a place to live in the quarter. At one time, there were more than 1000 bronze craftsmen living in the area, producing everything from Buddhist iconography to household goods.
With recent rises in metal prices, many bronze artisans have abandoned the industry after a dramatic decline in their margins, and many traditional patterns associated with domestic bronze casting are starting to disappear.
“Even though we want to produce our products with high technology and advanced machines, the profit we receive back is so small that we dare not,” said Zin Min Tun. “Customers prefer low cost goods which are not very artistic, so we cannot show off our skills in our products. There are no more youth interested in this kind of art. I’m afraid it will soon fade away.”
Bronze craftsmen, passionate about the heritage of their trade and working with the medium for generations, now rarely benefit from the windfall gained from commissions like the Shwe Taung Sar bell.
“We are dreaming of a training program and grants for the youth, to promote and preserve it,” Zin Mun Tun said. “But I fear it is just a dream which we will never accomplish. We have to maintain this culture as much as we can to hand it over to generation after generation.”
