Page 45 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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CHAPTER 1: A FLOW CHART

Based on archival materials, Part I investigates the process and modes of transaction in

Loo’s dealing. This chapter offers an overview of the Loo’s business operations by

tracing the journey of the object in his collection. Each section looks at a particular phase

in a typical transaction: supply, documentation, promotion, and distribution.

Supply

Even a brief look at C. T. Loo’s sources of supply yields the impressive scope, quality

and mobility of Chinese antiquities in the international art market in the first half of the

twentieth century.

Loo often presented himself as an adventurer who eagerly embarked on art hunting

sagas around the world. Loo made regular buying tours in Europe, China, and the United

States. His writings provide us some clues about his journeys in this eventful era. Loo

mentioned his jade purchase trip in 1914 for the French collector G. Gieseler on the eve

of World War I, “…I left Paris on July 21, (it happened to be the last train leaving France

before the First World War) and arrived in Peking on the first of August, the very day

when France declared the General Mobilization and the invasion of the East by the

Germany Army occurred. I stayed in Peking for two or three days and then went to

Shanghai” (Loo 1950, Preface). In 1917 Loo wrote to the Harvard professor Paul Sachs

about his travel in China, “Since three weeks that I am in (Pekin?), I have also been to

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Shantung, but nowhere can I find any very important objects! I am leaving soon for the

33 Shandong.