Wood identification of Chinese Buddhist statues in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

International audienceWood identification based on anatomical features was performed on thirty Chinese Buddhist and deity statues, preserved in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). While research on Buddhist statues’ wood species in Japan has an over 70-year-old history, Buddhist statues in East Asian countries such as China and Korea have not yet been fully investigated scientifically. This research is part of a large project in which the wood species of Chinese Buddhist and deity statues from various Western museums underwent microscopic wood identification and our goal is to construct the database of wood selection for statues.In order to know the reason for what kind of species of trees were used for sculptures in different countries, the best way would be to examine the species of wood statues made in ancient countries starting with China. However, it is believed that few wooden statues from before the 10th century have survived in China. Therefore, this survey of the tree species of Chinese wooden statues preserved in the United States was very important to compare that of wooden statues made in Japan.In this study, aside from conventional optical microscopy, synchrotron X-ray micro tomography for very small samples was performed. The following wood species were identified for the Chinese statues:Tilia sp. (11 statues), Paulownia sp. (7 statues), Salix sp. (6 statues), Lauraceae (2 statues), Pinus subgenus Haploxylon (1 statue), Cladrastis sp. (1 statue), Populus sp. (1 statue), and Juniperus sp. (1 statue).We hope this research will contribute to discussing the historical context of the statues and to elucidating the criteria of wood selection for Chinese, Korean and Japanese statues