The workshop
Drawn by hand, so no two come out the same.
Mr. Nagaraja has been making these pieces since 2005. He taught himself. There was no workshop where he could apprentice, so the first few years were spent learning how far copper will move before it tears, and how to get a face right when the metal gives you only one attempt at the line.
The copper he uses is thin — thin enough to work cold. The design is drawn onto a copper sheet first, then pushed up out of the sheet with shaped hand tools, worked from the back for depth and from the front for definition. Nothing is heated, hammered, pressed or cast.
Every stage is done by hand in the workshop in Perak: the drawing, the pushing, the polishing, the painting, and the framing at the end. Nothing is traced from a mould or stencil, so no two pieces of the same deity come out the same.
Pieces have gone to homes in Malaysia, Singapore, India, the United Kingdom and Canada, and to temple committees, who also send older panels in for restoration.
The tools are unremarkable — a handful of shaped steel points, a yielding backing to work against, brushes. What takes the time is that copper moves a fraction at a stroke, and every stroke shows.
How a sheet becomes a piece
Five stages, in this order, every time.
01
Draw
The whole composition is drawn onto the copper first — figure, ornament, background, every line that will later be pushed. Nothing is traced from a mould or stencil, so no two pieces of the same deity are identical.
02
Push
The form is pushed up out of the sheet with shaped hand tools, working from both sides — depth from behind, definition from the front. This is the slow part, and the part that cannot be undone: copper this thin will not take a line twice.
03
Polish
The worked surface is cleaned and brought up so the copper reads as copper again. For pieces with an antique finish, the polish is held back in the recesses to leave the depth darker.
04
Paint
Colour goes on by hand, one area at a time — the background first, then jewellery, garland and cloth. Skin and ornament are left as bare polished copper, which is why the figures still catch light the way metal does and not the way a print does.
05
Frame
The panel is mounted, glazed and framed. The frame is chosen to the piece rather than bought to size, and it is the last thing done, so the artwork is never handled loose after painting.