Fan

The fan, which can be opened in two different directions and can thus present four different pictures, has lobular paper leaves with scalloped edges. When opened rightwards the principal scene is revealed: a barber's shop run by monkeys, where on a cushion placed on a barber's high chair, a cat sits with a kerchief round his neck and a mirror in his paw a monkey is putting the finishing touches to his customer. The other three monkeys are busy with monkey customers. Above, on a scroll, is the following text: Potz glick der schath ist gros scheint nit zu curirer / Ihr seit nuhn auch barbirt ich hab vtill patienten / Oblutt mein koft ist week tuth mich gmachlifiren / dorbandbruch pflaster her das man sie kan verbinden (Damn it, there's really big trouble here, Perhaps it can't be cured. You've already been barbered. I've got a lot of patients, oh, my head, my plasters here, so that we can bind these up.)

In the middle the scroll is interrupted by a nine-lobed aperture to the right of the scroll is a mirror-frame and to the left a lantern-shaped aperture. All three are filled with mica. (The fan's owner could look through these apertures while her own face remained concealed.) On either side there is a chinoiserie garden detail. On the versos is an Oriental garden with butterflies. When the fan is opened leftwards it presents two figures bathing in a small lake and another three figures approaching them. In the hand of one of the figures in the chinoiserie scene is a fan, the leaf of which is the nine-lobed mica-filled aperture through which the owner could look when the fan was opened rightwards. On the verso there is a detail of a garden with exotic flowers and birds, as well as stag beetles. The sticks are unadorned, while the painted embellishment of the guard-sticks is made up of Oriental flowers and a female figure. The contemporaneous box is covered with flecked paper on the outside and lilac paper on the inside.

A fan of the same type and identical age is Inv. no. 59.886 in the Museum's collection.