The Carved Diamond Crucifix, carved
by the Late Mahendra Shah, is a unique and famous diamond sculpture. In fact it
is one of the first sculptures to be carved out of black diamond. The beauty of
the piece of diamond carving lies in the fact that it is handmade. Diamond is
the hardest material and it is a difficult job to carve it into a sculpture. Thus,
it is considered indeed an achievement for the artist who uses handmade tools
to carve sculptures from such a material. Both patience and diligence are
essential for this art. The carved diamond crucifix is of high aesthetic value
as well. The Crucifix diamond sculpture marvellously portrays the agony and
pain of Christ when he was crucified.
Whilst discussing the carved diamond
Crucifix, it would be interesting to note how it is actually sculpted. The
process begins with measuring each and every small part with an electronic
digital caliper on the original wooden crucifix. Another interesting fact is
that Mahendra Shah designed his own instruments to carve the Crucifix Diamond
Sculpture. Assuming 24.44mm:1mm as the conversion factor, all the dimensions
were calculated. Thus the head to toe measurement that was 570mm in the wooden
crucifix, measured to 23.31mm in the diamond carving. For example the 490mm
dimension of head to ankle was converted into 20.04mm. Head to knee, head to
thigh, head to waist, head to naval point, head to chest bones, head to chin,
head to nose and height from raised hands to bottom stand were all meticulously
altered for the diamond carving. There are factual details, too, of the chest
width, waist width at navel point, knee width, thigh width, calf width, ankle
width, palm width, elbow width, wrist width and the arm-pit width. To
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