INTEC 38 - Sculpture, apotheek gaper, handgeschilderd, collectors item - 21 cm - ground natural stone - 1978

Intec Gaper number 38. Damage to the nose. See and read the booklet.
Collection of 41 gapers, issued and produced by the Intec firm in Veenendaal.
Only drugstores and pharmacies with sufficient turnover received these, the unique, hand-painted gapers.
All made of ground natural stone, only number 41, the last one is made of resin.
The molds were eventually destroyed at a farewell party of the Firm in front of the guests.

Gapers were identification marks for pharmacies, chemists and drugstores. They first appeared at the end of the sixteenth century and occur only in the Dutch, Frisian, and Flemish language areas.
Most that are still used today as identification marks date from the nineteenth century or are replicas.
The gaper remains a mysterious phenomenon. The origin is unknown.
For its characteristic, the wide-open mouth, there are several explanations.
One medical explanation: showing your tongue for a diagnosis, and then taking the prescribed medicines.
Some gapers indeed have a pill on the tongue or a sulfur match in the mouth.
Another explanation could be that the patient, overwhelmed by fatigue, lets his mouth fall open.
The most common gapers are Easteners with a turban.
There are also jesters, police officers, firefighters, Roman soldiers, and the sick.

Gapers are real folk-art products and appeared only in the Netherlands and Flanders.