Mich for Café Martin/Piver Perfumes

Fan with plain wooden sticks.

The double paper leaf printed on the recto with an amusing chromolithograph of a fashionably dressed female figure piloting a Wright Brothers' Model A type plane (with canoe shaped attachment) above water dotted with boats; beside the pilot sits a somewhat terrified looking dog. Inscribed 'Souvenir Café Martin, New York' and signed 'Mich'.
The verso is printed en camaieu in green with flower garlands forming a repeat design; the centre bears an inscription stating the fan is 'perfumed with Pompeia'.

The subject for this fan may allude to the Hudson-Fulton celebrations of 1909 when Wilbur Wright was invited to make a number of exhibition flights above New York and the Hudson River. Wright did in fact attached a red canoe to the plane’s skis for one such flight – if the plane went down in water he could use the canoe to float to safety.