Je chante l'Eventail, arme utile et légère, Qui servant de pâture au sexe qui sait plaire... (C. Millon - L'Eventail)

       
            - To offer a place dedicated to this utensil, ephemeral and eternal, futile and full of meaning;
            - Because we would like the Fan to be better recognized as part of art and history, and increase its position in the field of knowledge;
            - To create here a public place  where fans amateurs and others can come and contribute, from everywhere in the World, to develop understanding and peace among nations and individuals.

        "Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality" (Dalai Lama .... and wisdom of nations)

      Who are we? two married french collectors, who have been experiencing for over several decades years a keen interest in hand fans. This interest can be explained by :

            * the amazing variety of these objects, works of both art and crafts, costume accessories, political propaganda and advertising tools, testimonies of public and private life of our ancestors;
            * The field open by such a collection to studies and research of any kind;
            * The (relatively) low cost of fans, allowing to build a collection without investing the sums required by collections of paintings, antique cars, or even porcelain;
            * The limited space required;
          * Also, we must confess, the eminently "French" touch of the fan: this frivolous and fragile object can mean serious and lasting things as well and studying it allows to approach with lighntness the more serious subjects (art history, politics, economy ...) or seriously the lighter subjects!

            This led us to one of the most scholar studies, though deliberately kept away from a too serious academic language. The results were a Masters in Art History obtained in 2011 at Rennes 2 University (France), followed in  3 October 2015. The thesis is available online (in French) : see Thèse P.H. Biger (also available at  https://fr.scribd.com/document/368869431/2015eventail).   You can find here a table of contents and the index of proper names of the  thesis.

You can download the text (in French) of the "discours de soutenance" I pronounced on this occasion. History or Art scholars are welcome to get in touch. So are curators wanting to show hand fans (see link on our home page  and a personal bibliography on Research Gate.

Vous can also read here the page the Gazette d'Esprit XVIIIe devoted to us in 2016, with translations to English and Japanese. Alas this pleasant Gazette has now disappeared, ans did the Tiscali group which, on the "Respublica" website interviewed us about this Place de l'Eventail.   Here is this interview!

          

        (detail of a 1680/1700 fan leaf showing the childhood of Bacchus. - Coll C. & PHB)
Reminder: the reproduction of all or part of text or images on this site, for any purpose and in any form whatsoever, is prohibited without our agreement.

       

            * We offer, besides news information (which can only come from you, friends of the Place of the fan!) And, on occasion, the Special Pages,

            - A brief overview of the history of the Fan (Fan history);
            - The "basics" or School Gallery, glossary and significant examples of fans;
            - A bibliography;

            but above all, to illustrate the interest of the study of the spectrum;

            - Monographs: (most of them in French and English), renewed according to our possibilities and our mood;
            - Fan questions: questions about a fan or a kind of fans to collectors, enthusiasts and other users in order to increase the common knowledge. If successful, those pages may become monographs.             We try, but always get there, stay truly amateurs than collectors in order not to be victims of this disease so well described by Lucretius (98-55) in Rerum Natura From: "As long as the object we desire is not there, it seems greater than all; only he is ours, we want another, and our thirst remains the same. "
           
        Feel free to send me your comments, remarks, criticism ... and contact me about everything related to fans, particularly following my academic work on the topics of European fans. I am ready to consider any request to participate in conferences, magazines, exhibitions and responding to requests for advice from museums as well as from individuals. But I let the market value assessments of fans to people who make a living with this job. Thank you !