The process begins as a sculpture in wax and ends as a hole in the ground. A core is built from riverbed clay, shaped to the mass of the finished piece, and dried. Beeswax from the forest is rolled into threads and wound over that core to make the figure: the arms, the ornaments, the hair, all of it built up in wax cord.
A second clay skin goes over the wax, fine on the inside and coarse on the outside, mixed with dung and rice chaff so it can breathe. Small wax channels are added so the metal can run and the air can leave. The whole package is buried and fired.
The firing is the loss. The wax melts out of the channels and leaves a hollow exactly the shape of the figure. Molten metal, in Bastar usually recycled bronze and scrap sheet alloyed with tin, is poured into that void. When the casting cools, the clay is broken away, because the mould is single use and cannot be reused.
That single-use mould is the reason a Dhokra piece can never be a true replica. The maker rebuilds the wax every time, and the wax remembers the hand. Two candelabra from the same workshop will stand at the same height and differ in the curl of the arms.
The work we describe here is centred on Kondagaon, where the wax is forest beeswax and the investment clay comes off riverbed silt. We hold no supplier document for this belt yet, so no GI entry, port or lead time is quoted in this story either.
For a buyer, the practical questions are about alloy and finish rather than design. We ask for the lead and cadmium test report, the outdoor finish if the piece will stand outside, and a sealed golden sample before a batch is allocated, because the surface of a cast piece is where the differences show.
The mould exists once, is filled once, and is broken to release the metal.
