David Weldon and Jane Casey Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, pl. 30 and back cover.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1996–2005 (on loan).

Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2005–2🌳018 (on loan).

The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1999.

Arte Buddhista Tibetana: Dei e Demoni dell' Himalaya, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, 200♛4, cat. no. IV. 70.

Casting the Divine: Sculptures of the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2012–13.

These two finely wrought door fittings represent the renowned Tibetan mastery of damascene ironwork, a skill traditionally associated with the specialist workshops at Derge in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. The projecting domed bosses depict the silvered faces of wrathful guardian deities, with bulging eyes outlined in gold, flared nostrils, wide open mouths showing silvered teeth and fangs, 🍒red copper lips, and with the menacing curled tips of the tongues, flaming eyebrows and mustache, and ears all overlaid in gold. The faces are framed by golden rings of fire emanating from the mouths of silver white skulls, with red copper severed heads at the cardinal points. Each boss would have been attached to adjacent temple doors by means of a sturdy iron pin through the hole below the lower lip, and another pin hinged to a ring pull and passing through the channel in the forehead.