Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (3.1976/1979)

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383), 1757 (Fenton 1975, 91), 1760 (Bailey
1772, Pls. 20-21), 1767 (Peate 1929, 43), 1772
(Higgs 1964, Figs. 116 and 117),etc. Alexan-
der Fenton has pointed out that the design was
not so remarkable that it could not be copied
by the local joiners and smiths, but John
Higgs states that it was included even in 1772
in the catalogue of a London agricultural-
machinery manufacturer.
F.M.Feldhaus thinks that a winnowing-
machine which was built in 1760 by a man by
the name of Evers and which was purchased in
the following year by the Society for the En-
couragements of the Arts made the fan known
in Germany, where a translation of John Bai-
ly’s book “Advancement of the Arts” was
published in Munich in 1776 (Feldhaus 1914,
under: Siebmaschinen; Collins 1969, 38). No
attempt will be made here to summarize the in
part quite confused and conflicting informa-
tion about the further distribution of the win-


Fig. 14. Sheet used during the casting of seed,
according to a copy of a Japanese manuscript in the
Nat. Ethnographical Museum, Stockholm.
Platte, die laut der Kopie einer japanischen
Handschrift im Statlichen Ethnographischen Mu-
seum, Stockholm, beim Worfeln von Getreide
verwendet wurde.

nowing-fan in Europe.2 As far as Germany is
concerned, Gunter Wiegelmann has promised
us an account of it. However, it should be
borne in mind that Henri Louis Duhamel
Dumonceau reproduced a winnowing-fan of
this kind (Duhamel 1754, Pl. 118). A remark-
able statement (with no reference to source) is
that by Lynn White, Jr., that the winnowing-
fan “curiously turns up in 1768 among the
peasantry of upper Austria and the Sieben-
biirgen” (White 1962, 104; Needham 1965,
155, note c “Carinthia and Transylvania”). In
all these cases, it is apparently a matter of these
fans occurring on large farms belonging to
pioneers in the sphere of agriculture. Gen-
erally speaking, a wider distribution, compris-
ing smaller units, does not appear until to-
wards the end of the 18th century and, above
all, during the first half of the 19th century. In
this connection, the fan would often seem to
have been improved in several ways and,
amongst other things, combined with shaking
sieves, by which previously separate opera-
tions were united. Something more will be
said about this below in connection with the
treatment of later developments in Sweden.
As is clear from what has been said above,
documentary information has not yet emerg-
ed anywhere, except in Sweden, concerning
the Chinese provenance. It seems evident that
we have to imagine that the earliest incentive
came from Flanders, though the actual impor-
tation took place through Amsterdam. Wat-
son says that “the fanner ... was also in use in
Holland ... having according to tradition been
introduced to that country from the Dutch
East Indies” (Watson 1926, 47), but it is uncer-
tain whether this is anything more than vague
speculation. At any rate, we might imagine,
with almost equal reason, an importation
from Japan, a country with which the Nether-
lands had commercial connections at an early
date and where, as we have seen, the occur-
rence of the winnowing-machine is well at-