A Mini Digital Collection of Ancient Fans

Fans have existed for at least five thousand years in Egypt, India and China. If fans merely make people cooler, or if they be taken more seriously as manifestations of cultures and tasters?” Does a fan have its secret language? To answer such questions, it is necessary to explore the role that fans have played in the cultural. In fact, fans have been variety of uses through the ages. Early civilizations turned simple fans used for winnowing grain into huge ceremonial standards; later people invested fans with a special status in religious and court rituals. In this collection, I will introduce the initiate, history of fans and some typical fans of east and west counties from seventeenth to nineteenth century.

How did people begin to use a fan? Nobody really knows. May be the first person on this earth who felt too hot, he picked up a palmetto leaf to ‘agitate the air’ and made himself cool down. The word ‘fan’ comes from the Latin word vannus, meaning an instrument for winnowing grain. The sweating laborer could cool him- or her-self, while grain was winnowed by a fan.

History of fans

Different countries there were different style of fans. And obviously, there were different styles in east and west of counties.

China and Japan

Fans were enormously important in both China and Japan. All the ancient civilizations of the world have recorded the use of ceremonial fans. According to the earliest written records are of two feather fans which were offered to the Emperor Tchao-wong of the Chou Dynasty in 1052 B.C.


Figure 1, Ceremonial fan K’o-ssu (silk tapestry) Chinese; late 18th century or early 19th century.

China and Japan use fans within rigid court etiquette as well ordinary social customs and the dance. Both of them have the longest history of the use of personal fans. Chinese were probably the first to apply a painted design on to a fan (fig. 1), but it was the Japanese who invented the folding fan.
There was an interesting story about inventing fold fan in Japan. There was a couple, living during the reign of Emperor Jen-ji at Tamba, near Kyoto. One night, as they lay asleep, a bat flew into their room, the woman insisted that the man should get up and get rid of it, the men lay in bed until the bat flew too near a lamp, scorched its wings and fell to the floor. As he handled the bat, he noticed how its wings folded open and shut, and he thought that perhaps a fan might be made the same way. So a fan could be folded when not in use and carried in the sleeve or pushed into the top of a boot. The oldest forms of Japanese folding fans used to be called komori, which is also the word for ‘bat’. Japanese devised the most ingenious forms and convenient uses for the object. See the figure 2.

Figure 2, this is Japanese fan with paper leaf painted and hand-stained in about 1900.

East has always been far more open to variations in technique, material, design and use than west. They used woods, bamboos, bast or crepe-papers, turtle shells or silks and handles of iron, gold, ivory or leather.
Early Europe and the Middle East

In ancient Europe and the Middle East fans started as cruse instruments, usually intended to whisk away flies, or as large ceremonial standards. The materials of fans include grassy reeds, feathers and hairs. These kinds of fans can still be seen today carried by some rulers and Paramount chiefs in Africa. As the fan developed it became increasingly an important ceremonial instrument, for instance, often granted to a hero after some victorious battle.

Religion

Fans also were widely used in religion. The fan has taken on symbolic meanings-in the disc-shaped in Christian Church ceremonies. In the east its religious use has been even more widespread. People who live in or have visited India are well aware of the problems with flies and have always used the fly-whisks; the Jains, a religion of India, people could whisk away the flies from settling on their gods without harming or destroying them.

The varieties of materials used for these fly-whisks, like horse-hair, various grasses, and peacock feathers

Italy

Italy’s fans have been painted by the finest artists of their time. The earlier mounts were generally of ‘chicken-skin’ or vellum, the paintings carried out in gouache or water-colors. They copied the real colors from frescoes (painting on the wall)-black, rust-red (fig.3) etc.


Figure 3, An Italian fan of about 1725 with a painted leaf of chicken skin showing the eruption of Vesuvius and a group of Neapolitan
fishermen watching the spectacle.
The sticks of carved or fretted bone or ivory, displaying a large central vignette when unfolded. These vignettes were hand-painted.

Occasionally fine fan leaves never mounted as a fan.(fig.4)



Figure 4, a well-engraved fan leaf showing a view of Venice during the annual celebration of the Marriage of Venice with the Adriatic in 18 century.

French

Somewhere in the mid-seventeenth century the French stared painting their fans. They use dark background, decorative in character, very large, very rich, very correct and often regal. Generally a full painted scene would stretch from right side to the other with no extra Decoration (fig. 5).






Figure 5, fan entitled The Crowing of Esther, French, 1690.

In eighteenth century the style for painting fans in France had altered. Often figure in a landscape, light background was favored. Not only central theme enclosed in a painted border but subsidiary themes were placed in two other circles, ovals or squares on either side, the empty spaces in between were surrounded by a full border of leaf and flowers (fig. 6).
Very often the subject matter was from classical, bible, and mythological stories, but it could also be mythological stories.





Figure 6, Ballooning fan, 18th century, French.

English

The history of painted fans from England follows roughly the same lines as in Italy and France. Queen Elizabeth I, who encouraged her merchant traders to bring luxuries from all over the world for the people of England. This is Elizabeth I, holding a feather fan (fig. 7).









Figure 7, Queen Elizabeth I, holding of feather fan.


But gradually, fan-painters realized that they should make their work differently with Italy and France. Architectures were painted on the fans and were framed by flower.
This is an English fan of about 1752 painted with a view of Ranelagh Gardens, and showing the Chinese pavilion in the foreground. The ivory sticks are carved and pierced with vases of flowers, and gilt and painted with blue flowers and ribbons (fig. 8).


Figure 8, English, c.1752.
They used vellum, parchment, and other material derived from the skins of chickens, pigs, and kid goats for leave of fans. Sometimes they also used silk.

Spain

The Romantic French writer, Theophile Gautier, wrote in Tra Los Montes of the importance of the fan in Spain: “A women without a fan is a thing I have never yet seen in that favored land; ……their fans, which follow them everywhere, even to church…..” In Spain, there was a fan for every occasion, in the home, the street, the bull-fight, the theatre or the church.
Before 1802, Spain imported many of fans from France. The French made a special point of producing fans to the Spanish, the colors very rich and bright, the pleats few and very wide, the sticks spaced apart, when the fan was opened almost 180 degrees and the weight heavy, like figure 9. Most of sticks are either entirely of ivory or of mother-of-pearl with carved figures, flowers etc.

Figure 9, Spanish or French-made for the Spanish market, c.1760. A fine fan, the leaf is painted with a lady drinking chocolate. The ivory Battoire sticks are carved and gilt with the arms of Spain.
Two fans were developed at court, domino fan and mask fan. The fans were as special aids for young ladies want to attract men. The domino fan was perfectly ordinary, often painted to look like velvet or patterned lace. Two small sections were cut out for the eyes so that the fan might be used as a mask. The mask fan was another perfectly simple folding fan but painted across the whole of the front of a fan, the two eyes and mouth cut out. Then a lady would hold it up to her own face and it would be very difficult to tell who she was. This was a Spanish mask fan in 18th century.



Figure 10, An important mask fan of about 1760, the leaf painted in the form of a clown’s face with the eyes and mouth cut out. The shaped vignettes at the sides depict elegant couples dining and dancing.

America

There are very little America fans, but this one is worth to mention. This is the extraordinary fan in the political history collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. The fan itself is an impressive object, made of ornate aluminum blades and folds of painted silk. The blades are cast with openwork, filigree, and chasing, each ending with an eight-pointed star, the top and bottom blades having elongated points. The metal features eagles, stars, and violet are very special, but their impression is the striking decorations of the silk and attached paper. Glued to each side of the nine interior blades is a small oval photograph of a woman. There are seven pictures in the upper leaf, tell us entire story of a political activity. The fan made in about 1866.





Figure 11, Fan, ca.1866 aluminum, silk and paper.