Seated Ancestors — five figure studies on cubes

Seated Ancestors

Yan Di, Huang Di, Chi You and their companions — figure studies from the Form System, finished in gold.

Year
2024 – 2026
Status
Edition · In development
Form
Sculpture
Materials
Gold-finished figure studies; bronze casting on commission
Dimensions
Studies c. 12–18 cm; cast editions from 40 cm; monumental on commission

The work

Yan Di is the common ancestor. The form is symmetrical — dignity, warmth and divinity held together — and the colour is the colour of earth; the clay keeps its hand marks. The attributes are his: the straw cape, the herb-whip of Shennong, the golden crow, the eight trigrams, the square cauldron.

The seated figures are the atelier's most direct route to monumental work: the same form, cast in bronze at four or six metres, becomes a threshold guardian for a destination.

Seated Ancestors — alternate view
Seated Ancestors — rendering in warm lightRendering
Yan Di for Fangdingyi — concept renderingRendering

Cultural source

Shanhai Jing and the ancestral genealogies of Yan Di, Huang Di and Chi You.

The artist's transformation

Ancestral figures without borrowed temple iconography — a contemporary sculptural language that still reads as ancient.

Making

Clay → scan → studies → bronze on commission. Renderings on this page are labelled as such.

Scale & variation

Desk study; plinth bronze; monumental threshold figure.

Placement

Thresholds, courtyards, cultural destinations, corporate headquarters.

Certificate & provenance

Every completed commission is delivered with a certificate of authenticity, a unique work ID, a cultural source note and a making record, and is entered into the atelier's private provenance archive.

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