page_title: Sculpture
section_title: Glass
hierarchical_section_title: Sculpture / Materials and techniques / Glass
caption_attribution_description: English: A wooden gilded statue of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara from the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279), from the Shanghai Museum. Français&#160;: Statue en bois doré de bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Dynastie Song (960-1279), Musée de Shanghai.
context_page_description: Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and modelling, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast.
  Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, and this has been lost.
  Sculpture has been central in religious devotion in many cultures, and until recent centuries large sculptures, too expensive for private individuals to create, were usually an expression of religion or politics. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, as well as many in Central and South America and Africa.
context_section_description: Glass may be used for sculpture through a wide range of working techniques, though the use of it for large works is a recent development. It can be carved, with considerable difficulty; the Roman Lycurgus Cup is all but unique.  Hot casting can be done by ladling molten glass into moulds that have been created by pressing shapes into sand, carved graphite or detailed plaster/silica moulds. Kiln casting glass involves heating chunks of glass in a kiln until they are liquid and flow into a waiting mould below it in the kiln. Glass can also be blown and/or hot sculpted with hand tools either as a solid mass or as part of a blown object. More recent techniques involve chiseling and bonding plate glass with polymer silicates and UV light.
caption: A carved wooden Bodhisattva from China's Song dynasty 960–1279, Shanghai Museum
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