A CHINESE SILVER-INLAID 'SHI SOU' STYLE BRONZE FIGURE OF GUANYIN LATE MING DYNASTY Standing with hands crossed, her eyes downcast and her face with a meditative expression, wearing her hair in a tall chignon fastened with an elegant hair piece, her long robes and veil detailed with ruyi-clouds and foliate scroll borders in silver filigree, the back with a two-character Shi Sou mark, 8kg, 48.6cm. Provenance: from an English private collection, Sussex. Silver-inlaid bronzes attributed to Shi Sou are known for their exceptional quality, yet there is no recorded information confirming the identity of this maker. Believed to have been a monk active in the late Ming period (c.1620-44), it is also possible that the mark for Shi Sou could relate to a bronze studio or school. A consistent feature of figures associated with this maker is their elegant modelling, as seen in the piece offered here. Three similar silver-inlaid bronze figures of Guanyin, all inlaid with Shi Sou marks and dated to the Ming dynasty, are in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Classics of the Forbidden City: Guanyin in the Collection of the Palace Museum, pls.43-45. Another variant of a silver-inlaid bronze Guanyin, bearing a Shi Sou mark and dating from the mid-16th to mid-17th century, is illustrated in Sydney L Moss Ltd's exhibition catalogue, Emperor Scholar Artisan Monk: The creative personality in Chinese works of art, pp.280-281, no.132. 明晚期 銅錯銀石叟款觀音立像 來源：英國薩塞克斯私人收藏。