Musee Guimet and First Best Friends

My oldest friend is in town. We've been FIRST BEST FRIENDS since we were 5. After grade school I would walk BARBARA ZUCKER home. Then she would walk me home. Then I...etc. We had a lot to chatter about back then.

She wanted to go to MUSEE GUIMET. I saw the KIMONO and KOREAN shows at the Guimet. Of course I said yes.

The Guimet has a lovely restaurant I can happily recommend for lunch, Salon des Porcelaines.

After lunch we began the search. Barbara is a sculptor and wanted to find the Chinese Tang 8th dynasty tomb figures she'd seen back in 2006. The GUIMET collection contains Southeast Asian artworks including India, China, Japan, Cambodia. We found them on the second floor.

Whimsical, lively and surprisingly realistic, the figures were made of molded earthenware.

We thought they had hints of Minnie perhaps...

Called mingui, they were usually servants, soldiers, dancers, musicians placed in tombs of people of high rank to be available to the deceased in the afterlife.

A single tomb of a member the imperial family could contain 100s of these figures.

Fascinated by the figure's hairdos, Barbara made sketches in 2006.

These drawings later transformed into a recent sculpture show called 'ADORNED' at BCA Center in Burlington this year. We left the Guimet and outside I shared with Barbara recent research I've been doing for the OCTOBER PARIS MAP (I'm still researching on Paris' best Kouign-Amann). It was her first taste. She liked it. A lot. XXX from Paris ❤️🐻