Page 95 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

The cast six-character mark on the base reading Da Ming Xuandenian
zhi (Made [during the] Xuande era [of the] Great Ming) asserts that this
censer was made during the Xuande reign (1426-35) of the Ming dynasty.
The style clearly dates the censer to the seventeenth century, however, so
the mark must be regarded as false. Like that on the previous censer [15],
the mark corresponds to traditional descriptions of marks on Xuande
bronzes and, generally, it compares in style and content to imperial marks
on ceramics of the Xuande period; subtle points of style distinguish it as
an imitation, however, in the same manner that other points identify the
mark on the previous censer as spurious.
Reading Shisou, the two characters inlaid in silver wire on the base
of this censer are an artist's mark claiming authorship for Shisou, an elusive
figure who seems to have escaped the notice of his contemporaries, so
that the dates and places of his birth and death are unrecorded, not to
mention the details of his life; even the proper rendering of his name is
disputed, some maintaining that the two characters represent a surname
(Shi) and a single-character given name (Sou), and others arguing that they
constitute a two-character hao, or sobriquet, meaning 'Old Man of the
Stone.' Tradition asserts that Shisou was a Buddhist monk active at the
end of the Ming dynasty and that 'Shisou' is a religious name, his family and
given names having been lost to history. He is said to have excelled in craft-
ing inlaid bronzes, his works of such refinement that they captured the
imagination of the literati and thus came to be produced almost exclu-
sively in shapes appropriate for the scholar's studio. Tradition further states
that he signed his works discreetly on the base with the two-character
signature Shisou in either seal script (zhuanshu) or clerical script (lishu), the
calligraphy always elegant and stately. 14
Numerous later bronzes bear Shisou marks, including four in the
Clague Collection [16-18, 55]; in fact, the mark appears on far more works
than that of Hu Wenming [11, 12] or any other known bronze caster. As
tradition asserts, pieces with the Shisou mark are virtually always items for
the scholar's studio; even small sculptures, usually of the Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara (Chinese, Guanyin pusa), sometimes display the Shisou mark
[55]. In cast bronze rather than raised copper, Shisou-marked pieces invari-
ably have linear decoration inlaid in fine silver wire, the decoration occa-
sionally embellished with a few judiciously placed bands of sheet silver or
gold, as in the present censer. Sculptures usually restrict their fine-wire
inlays to garment edges, enlivening the remainder of the robe with an
elegantly simple pattern of drapery folds. The bronze surfaces range in color

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