From the 20th of January until the 12th of May 2008 Tassenmuseum Hendrikje held the exposition ‘Fantastic Fans: From fashion accessory to contemporary design’. Aside from modern fans by contemporary designers and artists such as Piet Paris, Hester van Eeghen and Merel boers, a lot of historical fans can also be admired.

These came from the collection that was gathered by the passionate collector Felix Tal (1892-1983). It contains some 150 fans in all shapes and sizes, from Europe and the Far East, from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century. A unique collection.

Pictura digitized the collection. You can view it at Memory of the Netherlands. The vulnerable fans with their often richly decorated frames and delicately painted blades were scanned carefully. They were highlighted with a floodlight to bring out the structure and placed on a floating glass plate to separate them from the black background without disrupting shadows.

Two birds with one stone

For years, the Felix Tal collection could be viewed in Museum beeckestijn in Velsen-Zuid. In 2006, however, Beeckestijn closed and the municipality of Velsen decided to lend the fan collection to the Tassenmuseum for an extended period of time. Moving the collection, just as digitizing it, was done by Pictura.

The fans were tucked away on the attic of the impressive eighteenth century country house Beeckestijn. Using extreme care, maneuvering passed the chimneys and cross beams, Pictura moved out the collection and packed it in isolated containers for transport to Heiloo. There, the fans were scanned. Afterwards the originals, again protectively packaged, were delivered to the Tassenmuseum in Amsterdam. At the same time the digital images found their way to the servers of the Memory of the Netherlands.

The collection was moved and digitized in one integrated process. Quick and easy.