Master Sculptor Pemba Dorje was born in 1930, and began his training at the age of 14 in a region of southern Tibet that had a unique tradition of statue making. Each trainee learned every part of the process of making statues, from drawing to hammering copper into shape and finally gilding and assembling the completed pieces. Following the Tibetan uprising in Lhasa in 1959, Pemba Dorje escaped to India.

He now leads a team consisting of two assistant masters and 15 students. Not only has he passed on much of his skill and experience to these artisans, whose apprenticeship lasts 12 years, but he has also conducted substantial research and prepared two books in Tibetan explaining this sculptural tradition in exhaustive detail.