Sculpture, Gapers, Apotheek - 18 cm - Plaster - 2000

Three life-size, faithful replicas of a gaper that were used on the façades of drugstores and pharmacies as signs.
Gapers were recognition symbols for pharmacies, chemists and drugstores. They first appeared at the end of the sixteenth century and occur only in Dutch-, Frisian-, and Flemish-language areas. Most of the signs still used as emblems date from the nineteenth century or are replicas.
The gaper remains a mysterious phenomenon. The origin is unknown. For its characteristic feature, the wide-open mouth, there are several explanations. One is medical: showing your tongue for a diagnosis, followed by 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 easterners with a turban. There are also fools, police officers, firefighters, Roman soldiers and the sick."