Museum of Decorative Arts

The largest of the three museums in Le Louvre is the Museum of Decorative Arts. Founded in 1877, this is an enormous museum, except by the standards of the building housing it – the Louvre – of which it takes up the Tuileries end of the north wing. However, the museum is being reorganized and alterations will be going on until 2005.

Collections

The collections of this museum focus on the art of living from the Middle Ages to the present day. Some 220 000 pieces – ceramics, glassware, goldsmith work, jewellery, furniture, wallpaper, drawings and toys – are kept in its various departments, housed since 1905 in the Marsan wing of the Palais du Louvre.

The museum is filled with all sorts of items that illustrates the decorative skills from the Middle Ages to the 1990s. The contents ranges from objects of French interiors such as beds, blankets, cupboards, tools, stainglass and lampshades, to furnishings and fittings.

The meagre contemporary section has been added to recently – principally works by French, Italian and Japanese designers. You can also find several pieces from the twentieth century such as a bedroom by Guimard, Jeanne Lanvin’s Art Deco apartments, and a salon created by Geoges Hoentschel for the 1900 Expo Universelle.

You can also go back and explore the nineteenth century with the foreign and love of vivid colouring, to the intricate wood-carving of the eighteenth century, to seventeenth-century marquetry and Renaissance tapestries and ivories.
Currently, a section on the third floor is dedicated to toys throughout the ages, with changing exhibitions.

And, not to forget the Museum store, where you can find books, clothes, accessories, playing cards and other amusements, though not cheap.