Medeiros e Almeida Museum - Fans & Flabellums

The Casa Museu Medeiros e Almeida in Lisbon is one of Portugal's most captivating house museums, a testament to the extraordinary collecting instincts of businessman António de Medeiros e Almeida, who lived from 1895 to 1986. Spread across twenty-seven rooms and containing around two thousand works of art, the collection spans the second century BC to the twentieth century. Among them are European silk fans, Chinese Qing porcelain, paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, azulejos tiles, luxury silverware, Flemish tapestries, and an extraordinary collection of clocks, watches, and timepieces. The fans sit naturally within this broader world of refined decorative arts, reflecting the same eye for beauty, craftsmanship, and historical resonance. The European fans are displayed alongside Portuguese and French furniture, French and Flemish tapestries, as objects, fans occupy a particular place in the decorative arts — simultaneously functional and theatrical, intimate and social, small-scale works that speak to the manners, fashions, and material culture of the women who once carried them.