A Few Posts from Paris 2 – The CT Loo Gallery

I know Paris quite well and having been visiting fairly regularly since a lad. However, the area around the Parc Monceau is not a district I know much at all (see yesterday’s post). One, rather splendid but rather un-Parisian building I’d never strolled past before understandably caught my eye so I’ve dug around on it a bit – the CT Loo Gallery at 48  Rue de  Courcelles. It’s a quite amazing pagoda-inspired structure (though designed by a French architect) as you can see. Inside are Chinois style ceilings, a moon gate and a gallery carved with eighteenth and nineteenth century Indian wood. It was apparently founded in 1926 by Ching-Tsai Loo, a collector of Chinese origin and was Paris’s first major private collection of Asian art supplying museums of Asian art in Europe and America. The public can pop in and see parts of the house and collections of furniture and works of Chinese art as well as sculptures and art objects from Japan, Thailand, Burma and Tibet as well as China.