Fan enthusiast shares creativity, whimsy at museum

The Wine Country city of Healdsburg regularly finds itself on the lists for the best small towns in America. The city is home to Sonoma County’s only Michelin-starred restaurants, beautiful parks and dozens of wineries.

It also has another notable claim: It’s home to North America’s only hand-fan museum.

The Hand Fan Museum is a tiny space on the ground floor of Hotel Healdsburg facing Healdsburg Avenue and has hundreds of fans in its collection.

Pam Sher (pronounced like, “sure”), who has been collecting hand fans for more than 50 years, is consider by some to be the most influential fan collector in the West.

Sher started collecting fans in her 30s. Now, 83, she’s turned her hobby — some might say obsession — into a respected museum.

She is, in her own words, “a fan of fans” of all kinds.

“Fans are beautiful and practical and magical and full of creativity and whimsy,” she said.

Sher loves that each fan tells a different story, that each could be its own beautiful work of art. She had a particular fascination for advertisements that took the shape of fans — this style was popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Sher would gather fans from wherever she could — from her travels, from antique shopping, and even auctions, estate and garage sales. People donated fans and fan collections, too.

All of that adds up to some 2,500 fans in the museum collection and about 1,000 fans in her personal collection, said the Marin County resident. One fan — Sher’s most cherished — is at least 100 years old and is in the shape of a bat, with the silk weave on the sticks representing the body of the animal.

Sher opened the Hand Fan Museum in 2011 after her late husband, Merritt, the developer behind Hotel Healdsburg created the space for her fans. In 2017, when a slightly larger retail space became available on Healdsburg Avenue, she moved the museum there.

All the fans are small enough for people to hold in their hands. A select few of them are for sale, but not her favorite bat design, which is safe at her home. The museum displays about 50 or 60 fans at a time, some specialized, some for the masses.

For a recent exhibit, the museum displayed a cocktail dress made entirely of paperfans.

“The dress is a literal work of art,” Sher said. “It’s a great reminder that fans themselves are an art form, but of course, they can be used to make something even more spectacular.”

PHOTOS BY LAURA MORTON Pamela Sher poses for a portrait while holding a French fan from around the 1890s at the Hand Fan Museum, which she founded, in downtown Healdsburg.

Clockwise from top left: Pamela Sher holds one of the fans with a fish on display at the Hand Fan Museum: Sher shows a historic fan from France; Sher holds an Elvis fan and pointed out that fans were commonly used as advertising in the United States; Sher shows a delicate fan displayed in glass, Sher opens a historic fan from France; Sher’s collection includes cardboard fans, like this advertising one that depicts a bride. Sher’s museum is the only one in the United States devoted solely to hand fans.