Eventail plié (Folded Fan)

This hand-colored etching printed on paper leaf demonstrates the 18th-century practice of embedding political satire into functional objects. When folded, the fan's pages compress into a narrow wooden handle; when opened, the gathered sheets reveal a continuous narrative or scene. The technique exemplifies how caricaturists distributed commentary on aristocratic excess, royal policy, and social folly through ingenious formats that evaded censorship by disguising propaganda as luxury goods. This tradition of portable, concealed satire connected the legacy of Hogarth and Gillray to broader European print culture, where fans, handkerchiefs, and playing cards carried images of politicians and royals rendered grotesque through exaggerated features and inflammatory compositions—prefiguring how later comic sheets and periodicals would distribute sequential visual narratives to mass audiences.