Wooden fan, the paper leaf engraved in intaglio with a noblewoman offering potatoes to farmer women who refuse them.

Good condition (restoration to the reverse of one stick)

Height: 28.5 cm

This fan perhaps recalls an astonishing episode in the history of the potato in France.
Louis XVI supported Antoine Parmentier, an apothecary who was convinced that potatoes could replace bread in years of poor harvests. The king encouraged its cultivation, but the people shunned it, refusing to eat it and considering it fit only for feeding animals, while the great landowners followed the monarch's lead and grew it. Parmentier went so far as to distribute his tubers free of charge... to no avail. He had to be cunning: he aroused people's curiosity and covetousness by issuing decrees forbidding anyone to touch potatoes, and by having his fields guarded by guards during the day, leaving thieves to help themselves at night. The potato became a good food !