Page 113 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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condition and provenance information about the object he offered to the museum. Loo,

for example, informed the MFA of the place of origin and condition of the Buddhist

shrine (MFA 22.380), “Our Friend who bought this miniature Temple in China told me

that the roof was in existence when they discovered the Temple but it was very much

damaged and as there are only designs on the border of the roof, the people who found it,

had left it there. It was found during the foundation of an additional Hall in the Kwan-

ying Tan in Shu-Hsien 許州 Ho-nan.” (Fig. 17) 246

Dealers also provided valuable market information to the museum. Interested in

several objects in the French dealer Marcel Bing’s collection, Paul J. Sachs, a curator and

professor at Harvard, asked Loo whether Bing’s firm would continue it business after

Bing’s death. 247 Loo informed Sachs that it was very likely that the business would be

continued under Rene Hasse, Marcel Bing’s partner, or they liquidate the business under

Hasse. Loo mentioned that he was waiting himself for information from Paris and would

248
keep Sachs updated.

from the existing archive at the MFA, a similar account of the history of Lohan must
have been offered by C. T. Loo, whose Paris shop sold the Yamanaka the Lohan. In a
letter, Francis Stewart Kershaw thanked Loo “…for the details concerning the original
situation of the pottery Lo-han. It confirms the information contained in Perzynski’s
account”(F. S. Kershaw to C. T. Loo, January18 1917, folder: Lai-Yuan Co., box:
Unofficial Correspondence L, 1910-1922, AAOA-MFA).
246
C. T. Loo to J. E. Lodge, June, 13, 1921, folder: Lai-Yuan Co., box: Unofficial
Correspondence L, 1910-1922, AAOA-MFA. Loo’s information was not always
considered by museum curators as reliable or accurate. For example, after the purchase,
K. Tomita raised his question about “…whether these four panels were originally put
together in the way in which they now are.” When he tried to read the characters to
determine its locality, he found that the four characters have been deliberately marred (K.
Tomita to J.E. Lodge, April 26, 1922, box and folder unidentified, AAOA-MFA).
247 P.Sachs to C. T. Loo, November 5, 1920, folder, Loo T.C. Dealer, HUAMA.
248 C. T. Loo to P. Sachs, November 8, 1920, folder Loo T.C. Dealer, HUAMA.