明 銅觀音坐像 Seated on a double lotus base in padmasana, right hand raised, wearing a Buddha crown on head and ornate jewellery to front. Remnants of red lacquer to body. Ming dynasty. H. 37cm (14 1/2 in.) Provenance: Toronto estate, note from owner reads "My grandparents, Owen Gwen Richard Beynon and Annie Maud Beynon, went out to China in 1919 for him to work as an X-ray technician in the Shanghai hospital. It is there they obtained the items that I have. Of particular interest, in 1925 [likely an error in year recorded] when the Japanese bombed Shanghai, the statue of Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy, was flung into the street from the destroyed temple. My grandfather picked her up out of the rubble and brought her home. The black inside is still the soot from those bombs. We never cleaned it."