By Cheryl Bolen

Fans

Avril Hart and Emma Taylor

V&A Publications

London: 1998

126 pages

I purchased this book at the Fan Museum in Greenwich, England, but it is widely available through internet book sources. Made of high quality with an abundance of color photographs, the book serves as a reference on European fans and also depicts several of the fans in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (publishers of the book).

Other noteworthy European fans are in the collection at the British Museum, at Chatsworth House collections (England), The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and museums in France, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Much of the collection at the V&A was donated by the Victorian Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877).

Though ladies' fans originated in Japan in the twelth century, they did not come into use in Europe until the last half of the sixteenth century. From then until the twentieth century, they were widely in use, especially during the Georgian period.

Each of the fans pictured in this volume is a genuine work of art. The same painstaking attention to detail found in miniatures is found in fan painting, but on a far more extensive "canvas." The fans were not made of canvas but of velum, silk, or even lace.

The sticks, many of which were imported from the Orient, were made of pierced ivory, tortoise shell, bone, mother of pearl, and fragrant sandalwood.

The most popular motifs for the fans were classical, Biblical, or pastoral in the manner popularized by the paintings of the Frenchman Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Also, fans served as sort of a take-home postcard from places viewed on the Grand Tour. The books shows, for example, a lovely fan painting of St. Peter's in Rome.

It was common for a young woman to hold a fan when presented at court, and in the Georgian era women were most conscious of "the language of the fan" in flirtations.

Gilt, sequins, and even embroidery, along with masterful painting could be found on the fans, and cases were made expressly to hold a lady's fan. There is one illustration of a plain fan box printed thus: Robert Clarke, 26 Strand, London, Fanmaker to their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Prince of Gloucester. It is dated c. 1790. Just about the right date to throw it into one of our novels for authenticity.