Bastar Dhokra is lost-wax casting where the wax is never smoothed. It is rolled into threads and wound coil after coil around a core of red soil, cow dung and paddy husk, so the finished brass keeps every ridge the caster's fingers laid down. Figures come out stretched — limbs drawn to wire, weight carried in the head.

Unlacquered, the metal reads as a dull brownish bronze: dark in the valleys between coils, rubbed brassy where hands and cloth have touched the crests. Flash, seams and sprue stubs stay on the piece. The mould is broken to free each cast, so nothing repeats. This system is built from that surface, not from statuary.