HISTORY OF THE FAN

This edition is limited to 450 copies
for sale in Europe and the British
Dominions, of which this is No. 93.

HISTORY OF
THE FAN

BY G. WOOLLISCROFT RHEAD

R.E.; HON. A.R.C.A. LOND.; AUTHOR OF ‘THE PRINCIPLES
OF DESIGN’; ‘A HANDBOOK OF ETCHING’; ‘THE TREATMENT
OF DRAPERY IN ART’; ‘STUDIES IN PLANT FORM’;
‘CHATS ON COSTUME,’ ETC.; JOINT AUTHOR OF
‘STAFFORDSHIRE POTS AND POTTERS’;
‘BRITISH POTTERY MARKS’

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. Ltd.
DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W.
1910

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

DEDICATED
(BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION)
TO
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS OF WALES

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

THE majority of the blocks in this work were made direct from the actual Fans by Messrs. John Swain and Sons, to whom the Publishers are indebted for the skill and ingenuity with which they have overcome the many special difficulties incidental not only to the subjects themselves, but to the conditions under which many of those in private houses had to be reproduced.

The Colour Plates are printed by Messrs. Edmund Evans.

The block of the Fan Mount by Rosa Bonheur was made by Mr. F. Jenkins in Paris.

The block of the Japanese Fan Mount, The Tamagawa River, is by the Grout Engraving Company.

The lithograph of Bacchus and Ariadne is by Messrs. Martin, Hood and Larkin.

PREFACE

IT is, perhaps, a little singular that up to the present no work making any pretension to completeness has appeared in English dealing with that little instrument so intimately associated with both civil and religious life of the past, the Fan. Even on the Continent the literature of the Fan is exceedingly scanty. M. Blondel’s work, Histoire des Éventails, published in 1875, is but sparsely illustrated, and is mainly based upon the researches of M. Natalis Rondot, whose Rapport sur les objets de Parure was undertaken at the instance of the French Government in 1854. An English translation of M. Octave Uzanne’s brilliant sketch appeared in 1884, and is unillustrated except by fanciful border designs; while Lady Charlotte Schreiber’s stately tomes and Mrs. Salwey’s Fans of Japan deal only with more or less isolated portions of the subject. These, together with Der Fächer, by Georg Buss, appearing in 1904, one or two illustrated catalogues and a few desultory magazine articles, form the sum-total of the Fan’s literature. This paucity of book material, and the general absence of information amongst individuals, is at once an advantage and a disadvantage. I have in dealing with this subject such benefits as the breaking of new ground gives; I have at the same time to contend with the difficulty of collecting information from sources so scattered, and in many instances so obscure.

To the works above mentioned, which indeed have been most helpful, it is only justice to add the admirable article on ‘Les Disques crucifères, le Flabellum, et l’Umbella,’ in La Revue de l’Art Chrétien, by M. Charles de Linas; the sparkling and entertaining ‘History on Fans’ by Henri Bouchot in Art and Letters for 1883; an excellent article on Chinese Fans by H. A. Giles in Fraser’s Magazine for May 1879; articles in various publications by MM. Paul Mantz and Charles Blanc; all these I have freely used, and gladly acknowledge my indebtedness.

But, since it is scarcely possible, in a subject covering such an extended area, to avoid inaccuracies of some sort, I must endeavour to forestall any possible criticism by saying that no pains have been spared to render the book as free from errors as may be. As to the line illustrations, they must be considered merely diagrammatic, and not in any sense realistic representations of the various objects.

I welcome this opportunity of making what is an unusually long list of acknowledgments of help received. Firstly, to my Publishers for their enterprise, the admirable manner in which the book is produced, and for their uniform courtesy. Secondly, to the many owners of fans, these including the most exalted personages, who have so generously responded to my invitation to lend their fragile treasures.

My thanks are also due to the officials of the various Museums, those of the Print Room of the British, and the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museums; to Sir C. Purdon Clarke, C.I.E., F.S.A., and his son, Mr. Stanley Clarke of the India Museum; Dr. Peter Jessen of the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Berlin; Professor Pazaurek, Stuttgart; Dr. Hans W. Singer; to Sir George Birdwood, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., who has kindly read the three chapters on ancient fans; to Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L.; Mr. W. Holman Hunt, O.M., R.W.S.; Sir L. Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A.; the Rev. J. Foster, D.C.L.; the Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Fanmakers; the Librarian at Welbeck; Mr. Wilson Crewdson; Mr. W. Harding Smith; Mr. W. L. Behrens; Mr. R. Phené Spiers; Mr. G. F. Clausen; Mr. J. Ettlinger; Mons. J. Duvelleroy; Mr. H. Granville Fell; Mr. Frank Brangwyn, A.R.A.; Mr. Talbot Hughes; Mr. Frank Falkner, for help in various ways; and last, though by no means least, to Mrs. E. P. Medley, for most valuable assistance in translation.

CONTENTS

PEACOCK-FEATHER FAN.
(From a Japanese Painting. British Museum.)

ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE

ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN AND USES OF THE FAN

N the beginning, before the human advent, when the earth was peopled only by the Immortals, a bright son was born to Aurora, whose soft and agreeable breath was as honey in the mouth of the gods, and the beating of whose gossamer wings imparted a delicious coolness to the air, moderating the heat of summer, and providing the first suggestion of, and occasion for, the dainty little plaything we have under consideration, somewhat waggishly described as a kind of wind instrument, not, perhaps, so much to be played upon as to be played with, and invaluable as assisting to follow out the wisest of the Sage’s maxims when he bids us keep cool.

This delicate toy, this airy creation of gauze, ivory, and paint, frail and fragile almost as the flowers kissed by Aurora’s son, endowed apparently with the gift of perpetual youth, may claim a lineage older than the Pyramids; having its origin and being in the infancy of the world, before the birth of history, in that golden age when life was a perpetual summer, and care was not, when all was concord and harmony, and old age, long protracted, was dissolved in a serene slumber, and wafted to the mansions of the gods, the regions of eternal love and enjoyment.

It was in these halcyon days that the human family sat in its palm groves, which afforded not only refreshing shade, during the hours when the sun is at its height, but also provided the precursor of this ‘Servant of Zephyrus’—serving further to temper those beams which are the source of all life, and light, and music, for are not all the learned agreed with the late Mr. George Augustus Sala, that if a thorn was the first needle, doubtless a palm leaf was the first fan?

‘Beneath this shade the weary peasant lies,

Plucks the broad leaf, and bids the breezes rise.’[1]

The poets, however, who lay claim rather to inspiration than to the dry bones of mere learning, supply us with many fanciful suggestions as to the fan’s origin—a Spanish story (duly told on a printed fan) has it that the first fan was a wing which Cupid tore from the back of Zephyrus for the purpose of fanning Psyche as she lay a-sleeping on her bed of roses.

A quaint, though somewhat inconsequent, conceit is that of the French eighteenth-century poet, Augustin de Piis, quoted by M. Uzanne in his work on the fan, in which Cupid, at an inopportune moment, surprises the Graces, who were as much embarrassed as the god was delighted—to hide their confusion, with the hand that was unemployed, they endeavoured to cover up both eyes by spreading the fingers.

‘And soon Dan Cupid was aware

That though they veiled their eyes, between

The fingers of that Trio fair

Himself was very clearly seen;

On which his little curly head

Deeply to meditate began,

Till from their fair hands thus outspread

He took his first hint for the Fan.’

Whether we accept this explanation or not, and whatever circumstances attended the origin of the fan, it is abundantly clear that Cupid had a hand in it. Has not Gay told how the master Cupid traced out the lines, conceived the shape, converted his arrows into sticks, and from their barbed points, softened by love’s flame, forged the pin? Is not the fan one of the chief weapons in the armoury of the Love-God? Is it not the rampart from behind which the fiercest fire of love’s artillery is directed? Nay, is it not in very truth the sceptre of the Love-God? Did not the Greeks early recognise this fact by placing the plumed fan in the hands of Eros himself? The fan is at once the creation of Amor and the chief ensign of his sovereignty!

And its uses?

Madame la Baronne de Chapt, in the first volume of her Œuvres Philosophiques, discovers a hundred such:—‘It is so charming, so convenient, so suited to give countenance to a young girl, and to extricate her from embarrassment, that it cannot be too much exalted; we see it straying over cheeks, bosoms, hands, with an elegance which everywhere provokes admiration.

‘Love uses a fan as an infant does a toy—makes it assume all sorts of shapes; breaks it even, lets it fall a thousand times to the ground....

‘Is it a matter of indifference, this fallen fan? Such a fall is the result of reflection, of careful calculation, intended as a test of the ardour and celerity of aspiring suitors.—And the successful suitor, the favoured swain? Is it not he who discovers the greatest celerity in returning the fan to its charming owner, and, in doing so, imprints a secret but chaste kiss upon the fair hand that takes it, and is rewarded by a look ten thousand times more eloquent than speech?’

And if, peradventure, by the spell of some magician, this little instrument could itself be endowed with speech! Aha! ma chère madame, what tales could it not unfold from the recesses of its fluted leaves, what whispers! what confidences! what assignations! what intrigues!

‘Pour une Espagnole,’ writes Charles Blanc, ‘toutes les intrigues de l’amour, tous les manœuvres de la galanterie, sont cachées dans les plis de son éventail. Les audaces furtifs du regard, les aventures de la parole, les aveux risqués, les demi-mots proférés du bout des lèvres, tout cela est dissimulé par l’éventail, qui a l’air d’interdire ce qu’il permet de faire, et d’intercepter ce qu’il envoie.’

Disraeli (Contarini Fleming), in similar strain, with no less eloquence, says: ‘A Spanish lady with her fan might shame the tactics of a troop of horse. Now she unfolds it with the slow pomp and conscious elegance of the bird of Juno; now she flutters it with all the languor of a listless beauty, now with all the liveliness of a vivacious one. Now in the midst of a very tornado she closes it with a whirr, which makes you start. Magical instrument! in this land it speaks a particular language, and gallantry requires no other mode to express its most subtle conceits, or its most unreasonable demands, than this delicate machine.’

‘Women,’ says the witty Spectator, ‘are armed with Fans as men with Swords—and sometimes do more execution with them.... There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a Fan. There is the angry Flutter, the modest Flutter, the timorous Flutter, the confused Flutter, the merry Flutter, and the amorous Flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the Fan; insomuch that if I only see the Fan of a disciplined Lady I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have seen a Fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it: and at other times so very languishing, that I have been glad for the Lady’s sake the lover was at a sufficient distance from it. I need not add that a Fan is either a Prude or Coquette according to the nature of the person who bears it.’

Mr. George Meredith, too, would appear to have studied its motions: ‘Lady Denewdney’s fan took to beating time meditatively. Two or three times she kept it elevated, and in vain: the flow of their interchanging speech was uninterrupted. At last my father bowed to her from a distance. She signalled: his eyelids pleaded short sight, awakening to the apprehension of a pleasant fact; the fan tapped, and he halted his march, leaning scarce perceptibly in her direction. The fan showed distress.’[2]

In one of the sprightliest of Steele’s letters to the Tatler, the beauteous Delamira, upon the eve of her marriage, resigns her fan, having no further occasion for it. She is entreated by the matchless Virgulta, who had begun to despair of ever entering the matrimonial state, to confide to her the secret of her success. ‘That swimming air of your body,’ says she; ‘that jaunty bearing of your Head over your shoulder; and that inexpressible Beauty in your manner of playing your Fan, must be lower’d into a more confined Behaviour; to show, That you would rather shun than receive Addresses for the future. Therefore, dear Delamira, give me these excellencies you leave off, and acquaint me with your Manner of Charming.’...

Delamira explained that all she had above the rest of her Sex and contemporary Beauties was wholly owing to a Fan (left to her by her Mother, and had been long in the Family), which, whoever had in Possession, and used with Skill, should command the hearts of all her Beholders; ‘and since,’ said she, smiling, ‘I have no more to do with extending my Conquests or Triumphs, I’ll make you a present of this inestimable Rarity.’ ‘You see, Madam,’ continued she, upon Virgulta’s inquiry as to the Management of that utensil, ‘Cupid is the principal Figure painted on it; and the skill in playing this Fan is, in your several Motions of it to let him appear as little as possible: for honourable Lovers fly all Endeavours to ensnare ’em; and your Cupid must hide his Bow and Arrow, or he’ll never be sure of his Game. You may observe that in all publick Assemblies, the sexes seem to separate themselves, and draw up to attack each other with Eye-shot; That is the time when the Fan, which is all the Armour of Woman, is of most use in her Defence; for our

minds are constructed by the waving of that little Instrument, and our thoughts appear in Composure or Agitation according to the Motion of it. You may observe when Will Peregrine comes into the side Box, Miss Gatty flutters her Fan as a Fly does its Wings round a Candle; while her elder Sister, who is as much in Love with him as she is, is as grave as a Vestal at his Entrance, and the consequence is accordingly. He watches half the Play for a Glance from her Sister, while Gatty is overlooked and neglected. I wish you heartily as much Success in the Management of it as I have had;.... Take it, good Girl, and use it without Mercy; for the Reign of Beauty never lasted full Three Years, but it ended in Marriage, or Condemnation to Virginity.’[3]

If the fan is efficacious as a weapon of offence in Love’s sieges, it is no less effective as a shield against Love’s darts. On a painted Spanish fan in the Schreiber Collection in the British Museum are represented three fair nymphs in a wooded landscape, one of whom is receiving on her fan an arrow discharged by the Love-God, who is accompanied by my lady Venus in her car. On a scroll is the inscription, ‘l’utilité des éventails,’ ‘la utilidad de los abanicos.’

This use of the fan as shield, is adopted also by the shinláung, or monastic novitiate of Burma, who employs his large palm-fan, both as a shelter from the fierceness of the sun’s rays, and as a screen from the sight of womankind, moving, in the latter instance, his fan from right to left as occasion requires, i.e. whenever a woman happens to pass.

Epoch Louis XV.
Fan Mount—Unfolded.
Hommages offered at the Altar of Madame de Pompadour
by Church and State,—Literature, Art, Music, Etc.

A story, the source of which is not given,[4] is told of Goldoni, who, being one evening the guest of a Venetian lady, was complimented by her upon the productions of his genius.

‘Why, my lady,’ he replied, ‘anything provides a subject for a comedy.’

‘Anything?’ replied the lady.

‘Anything,’ emphatically replied the dramatist.

‘Even this fan?’ insisted the Beauty.

‘I shall be indebted to you for life,’ exclaimed Goldoni, struck with a happy thought. ‘You have suggested to me my best comedy; in a week you will read it.’[5]

Many and manifold are the uses of the fan. What device, for example, could better display the beauty of a rounded arm, or the ivory whiteness of tapered fingers? Such an instrument provides graceful and often much-needed employment to those same delicate fingers; it supplies that necessary sense of completeness to the tout ensemble of the picture. And the comedy actress, desiring some trifle to emphasise a movement, to give point and expression to some particular action—what more effective instrument than a fan, the use of which, on the stage, has almost been elevated into a fine art!

‘Pray, ladies, copy Abington;

Observe the breeding in her air:

There’s nothing of the actress there!

Assume her fashion if you can

And catch the graces of her fan.’

This at once recalls the saying of Northcote, who, although reluctantly compelled to admit Queen Charlotte’s excessive plainness, an elegant and not a vulgar plainness—she had a beautifully shaped arm, and was fond of exhibiting it—exclaimed, ‘She had a fan in her hand. Lord! how she held that fan!’[6]

Madame D’Arblay, in one of her most delightful letters, records a conversation between herself and Mr. Fairly (Col. Stephen Digby), who, upon the occasion of a visit to her, ‘finding she entered into nothing,’ took up a fan which lay on the table and began playing off various imitative airs with it, exclaiming, ‘How thoroughly useless a toy!’

‘“No,” I said, “on the contrary, taken as an ornament, it was the most useful of any belonging to full dress; occupying the hands, giving the eyes something to look at, and taking away stiffness and formality from the figure and deportment.”

‘“Men have no fans,” cried he, “and how do they do?”

‘“Worse,” quoth I plumply.

..........

‘“But the real use of the fan,” cried he, “if there is any, is it not—to hide a particular blush that ought not to appear?”

‘“Oh no, it would rather make it the sooner noticed.”

‘“Not at all; it may be done under pretence of absence—rubbing the cheek, or nose—putting it up accidentally to the eye—in a thousand ways.”’

The uses of the Fan? They are legion!—They record for us public events, military, political, civil; they tell us our fortunes; instruct us in Botany, in Heraldry, in tricks with cards; they propound conundrums; take us to the theatre, to bull-fights, to church, to the first balloon ascent; and to Mr. Thomas Osborne’s Duck-hunting!

In Shakespeare’s day no lady thought of stirring abroad without this accompaniment, the care of the toy devolving upon the gentleman usher—

‘Peter, take my fan and go before.’

Romeo and Juliet.

From the Aubrey MS., 1678, we learn that ‘the gentlemen (temp. Henry VIII.) had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures,[7] like that instrument which is used to drive feathers, and in it a handle at least half a yard long; with these the daughters were oftentimes corrected (Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief-Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan; Sir William Dugdale told me he was an eye-witness of it;[8] the Earl of Manchester also used such a fan); but fathers and mothers slasht their daughters in the time of their besom discipline when they were perfect women.’[9]

Hotspur’s exclamation, I Henry IV., II. iii., further serves to show that this instrument could, upon occasion, be used as an offensive weapon:

‘Zounds! an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan.’

The strength hidden in such an apparently harmless toy is thus recognised equally by both sterner and gentler sex: the hint contained in the quaint and charming conceit addressed to the fan of his mistress by Louis de Boissey, author of Le Babillard, will not be lost upon lovers:

‘Deviens le protecteur de ma vive tendresse,

Bel éventail! je te remets mes droits;

Et si quelque rival avait la hardiesse

D’approcher de trop près du sein de ma maîtresse,

Bel éventail: donne-lui sur les doigts!’

TEA FAN.

CHAPTER II

FANS OF THE ANCIENTS

EGYPT

The word fan, or van, is derived from the Latin vannus, the Roman instrument for winnowing grain. This winnowing-fan, held sacred by all the peoples of the ancient world, together with the fire-fan (bellows), also a sacred instrument, and used by the priestesses of Isis to fan the flame of their altars—these must be accounted amongst the earliest of the ancient and prolific fan-family. To the first named are several references in Holy Writ. Isaiah, xxx. 24, speaks of the oxen and young asses that shall eat clean provender which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan. Jeremiah, xv. 6-7, lamenting the backsliding of Jerusalem, exclaims, ‘I am weary with repenting; and I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land’; and again in li. 2, ‘Send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her, and shall empty her land.’

In Matt. iii. 12, and Luke iii. 17, John the Baptist, announcing the coming of ‘one mightier than I’—‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner.’

Both these instruments appear on a bas-relief from a tomb at Sakkarah, of the twelfth Pharaonic dynasty, circa B.C. 2366-2266, sixteen hundred years before Isaiah wrote. In this some shepherds are roasting trussed and spitted ducks over fires which are being kept alive by the plaited, wedge-shaped hand-fan; the winnowing-fan appearing in the same picture.

Servius, in commenting on Virgil’s mystical fan of Bacchus, (‘mystica vannus Iacchi,’ Georg. i. 166) affirms that the sacred rites of Bacchus pertained to the purification of souls; in Assyria, also, it was introduced in the ceremonies connected with the worship of Bacchus and became a sacred emblem.[10] This instrument, carried at the Dionysia or festivals in honour of Bacchus, was called Lichnon (Λίχνον), and was so essential to the solemnities of this god, that they could not be duly celebrated without it. So also Osiris, when judge of Amenti, holds in his crossed hands the crook and flagellum, the mystical vannus—‘whose fan is in his hand,’[11] each of these instances having reference to the generative principle, and the improvement of the world by tillage.

The passage in Jeremiah xiii. 24, ‘Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness,’ suggested the proud motto of the Kentish family of Septvans (Setvans):

‘Dissipabo inimicos Regis mei ut paleam.’

‘The enemies of my king will I disperse like chaff.’[12]

On the brass of Sir Robert de Septvans, 1306, Chartham, Kent, the knight’s shield and aillettes upon the shoulders are charged with the winnowing-fans from which he takes his name, and small fans are embroidered upon his surcoat. In the Lansdowne MSS. 855 B.M., the arms are thus given: ‘Sir robt de sevens dazur e iij vans dor.’

The Greeks named ῥιπίς the large flat instrument which was used to fan the fire: the diminutive ῥιπίδιον was applied to objects of similar form in ordinary use amongst both sexes for the purpose of fanning as well as to drive away the flies. Indeed the use of the fan as bellows

appears to have been practically universal, and to have dated from a very early period of the world’s history.

The employment of these instruments, as well as the forms which they assumed, is continued even to the present day:[13] in the Republic of Colombia, where fans are employed as much by men as by women, the kitchen of every hut and house throughout the country is provided with a fan in lieu of bellows, rectangular in form, albeit broader at the outside than at the short handle, and about 12 inches by 9 inches in size: These are formed of the young inside leaf of the cabbage-palm, the handle and back being the rib of the leaf, the fan portion being the fronds of the leaf plaited.

The Portuguese fire-fans (Abano) made in the south of Portugal, and in universal use in that country, are round in shape, coarsely plaited in straw or rush, and fixed in a rough wooden handle.

These, representing the two simplest elemental forms, are the primeval fans which have come down to us from the remotest periods of history, have endured through the centuries, and, like the fans in use in India at present, identical as a matter of fact with these in form, are as modern as they are ancient.

These two fans, the winnowing-fan and the fire-fan, minister to the two most pressing of man’s necessities—to the first of his physical necessities, his daily bread, and to his chief mental necessity, the attainment of the bread of life; the fire-fan keeping alive the flame sacred to the great goddess who is the mother of all things, mistress of the elements, giver of the golden grain, which, when ripened, is separated from the chaff by the winnowing-fan; the one instrument, therefore, being the complement and counterpart of the other.

The Egyptian plaited hand-fan, used for fanning the fire, as well as for other domestic purposes, was made in a precisely similar way to the Portuguese ‘Abano’ above referred to, except that instead of being a complete circle, it assumed the form of a rather full crescent. In the painted decoration of a tomb at Eileithyia, representing the interior of a storeroom, a workman is cooling, by means of one of these hand-fans, the liquid which is contained in a number of vases or amphoræ.

In a great funeral procession of a royal scribe at Thebes, servants carry, among other offerings, similar crescent-shaped matted fans, together with, in three instances, the more ornamental semicircular feather hand-fan used by ladies for the purpose of fanning themselves, and also, with a somewhat longer handle, waved by servitors in attendance upon great personages of both sexes.

On an Egyptian tablet or stele of the twelfth dynasty, in the British Museum, the lady Khu is seated with her husbands, receiving offerings from their children; a hand-fan of semicircular form rests against the seat; this evidently not of feathers, but rigid, since the construction is suggested in the representation, and obviously used by the lady herself rather than by attendants.

The handles of these fans were of ivory, of wood painted, or of sandalwood, which latter, when warmed by the fingers, exhaled a delicious perfume.

A few fan-handles exist in the various public museums; two occur in the British Museum, together with a portion of a handle inscribed with the name of Nebseni, inspector of the goldsmiths of Amen, eighteenth dynasty, illustrated opposite.

A primitive fly-whisk, of the type seen on the Assyrian monuments, appears in the Louvre, under Egypt, but undated and undescribed;

it is formed of grassy reeds of a buff ochre colour, bent backwards at the handle, and rudely tied with the same substance, the length being about 2 feet 6 inches.

The standard, banner, and processional fans are usually formed of the feathers of the larger birds, fixed in a long wooden handle, the feathers, as well as the handle, being painted or dyed in brilliant colours. These, as will be seen by a reference to the examples from Rosellini, are designed with the consummate sense of proportion distinguishing all Egyptian work. In both the examples given, the tips of the feathers are surmounted by a tuft of small fluffy feathers, this being a device common to many countries, and is seen in the North American Indian fan illustrated, page 82.

Many of these standard and processional fans, doubtless, were formed of some material stretched upon a semicircular frame, the fan decorated in various ways. They were in attendance on the king wherever he went; they were also used as standards in war, the king’s chariot being always accompanied by at least two. The fact that they were dedicated to the service of the gods is evidenced by a stele in the museum at Boulak, on which is represented Osiris enthroned with a flabellifer behind, waving the long-handled fan. The radiate fans, writes Professor Flinders Petrie, were used as sunshades, appearing in hieroglyphs as the determination of Khaib, i.e. shadow.

CEREMONIAL FANS
(From Rosellini.)

In the temple of Rameses XII., B.C. 1135, a tablet represents the departure of the Khonsu from Thebes to the land of Bakhatana. A standard fan of ostrich feathers of the Indian murchal type is fixed in the bow of the boat bearing the god in his ark, and a semicircular standard fan in the stern; both being inclined so as to meet above, and overshadow the ark.[14] In the temple of Derri in Nubia, the sacred barque of the god Phré is solemnly borne by twelve priests, the king accompanying in military costume; a flabellifer waves the long-handled fan.

Numerous representations of these long-handled, semicircular, standard fans occur on the monuments. At Thebes (Rhamessium) is

CEREMONIAL FANS
(From Rosellini.) figured a reception of the military chiefs and foreign envoys by Rameses III. Two servitors behind the king carry these fans, and two fan-bearers wave the ostrich-feather emblem.

At Medinet Abu, the same king is seated in his chariot with three servitors waving the long-handled, semicircular fans.

The tall, single ostrich plume was probably in the first instance a fly-whisk. It was the principal ensign of the office of fan-bearer, which was one of great distinction, and one of the highest in the gift of the monarch, none but royal princes or scions of the first nobility being permitted to hold it. The ceremony of investiture took place in the presence of the king seated upon his throne, and was usually performed after a victory, and granted for some distinguished service in the field. Two priests invest the holder with the robe, chain, and other insignia of his office, the fortunate recipient of the honour raising aloft the flabellum and crook, thus expressing his fidelity to his king and master. This was the usual formula of investiture of high office; its resemblance to the biblical account of Joseph’s advancement will at once be apparent.

‘And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.’

Upon the field of battle the fan-bearers either attended the monarch on foot or took command of a division with the rank of general. During the heat of battle, whether mounted in cars or engaged on foot, they either carried the emblem of their office in their hand, or slung it behind them. Their privileges were many, amongst them being the right of presenting prisoners to the king after a victory. The office was divided into two grades—those who served upon the right and left of the king respectively, the most honourable post being always conferred upon

INVESTITURE OF THE OFFICE OF FAN-BEARER
(From Wilkinson.) those of the highest rank, or for the most distinguished services. A certain number were always on duty, and were required to carry the monarch in the palanquin or chair of state, and to attend during the grand solemnities of the temple and upon all occasions of high state ceremonial.

The monuments bear eloquent testimony to the importance and significance of this object. At Thebes (palace of Medinet Abu), Rameses Méiamoun appears in a magnificent palanquin, surrounded by no less than twenty bearers of the fan emblem, amongst whom are the sons of the king.

In the same palace the ten sons of Rameses appear in the order of their precedence, bearing the emblem; the hieroglyphics, by their side, indicating their name and functions.

On an occasion when the king (Rameses IV.) receives the homage of the chiefs of the army, two servitors with the long semicircular fans, and two bearers of the fan emblem, are in attendance.

The highest significance of the fan emblem is when it is grasped by the talons of the sacred vulture, guardian and protectress of the monarchs. This figure occurs repeatedly on the monuments; at Medinet Abu, Rameses-Méiamoun is seen subduing an army of Asiatics, the vulture waving the fan emblem over the head of the king.

In the temple of Beit Oually in Nubia, Rameses II., helmeted, is striding over a fallen barbarian; the vulture of protection hovers around the head of the hero. On the same monument Rameses seizes by the hair a barbarian with broken bow, the vulture again in attendance. Upon the completion of the victory, four fan-bearers, each with crook and flabellum, offer the spoils of conquest to the king.

On a bas-relief at Thebes, Seti I. is seen in his war-chariot subduing the barbarians, also accompanied by the vulture.

At Philæ, Ptolemy Philometor appears with a group of vanquished Asiatics, the vulture once more in attendance.

In the papyrus of Hunefer (Book of the Dead) a winged Utchat, with Eye of Horus, waves the fan emblem over the head of Osiris.

In the papyrus of Anhai, over the Standard of the West, which crowns the Solar Mount and supports the hawk Rā-Harmachis, two winged Hori appear as the protecting principle.

This symbol of the vulture forms a motif for surface decoration on the ceiling of the hypostyle hall of the Rhamessium. Above the great bell capital, the vulture, grasping in each talon a fan emblem, is treated as a repeated ornamental pattern; it also appears as decoration of the umbrella or canopy of the chariot of Rameses III. (Sesostris).

We are thus enabled to realise the great part played by the fan alike in the military, civil, and religious life of Egypt. As an instrument in the hands of private persons, or even of slaves in attendance on individuals, it is less in evidence on the monuments, although we may naturally assume that in a climate such as Egypt this instrument would be in constant requisition. We strain the eye of imagination to the very earliest period of the history of this mystic land, and see in fancy the Queen of Menes the Thinite, surrounded by slaves only a little less fair than herself, waving the fan of square form actually appearing on a cylinder in the Louvre; we see, also in fancy, the famed and beautiful Queen Nitôcris, the handsomest woman of her time, builder of the third Pyramid, reclining upon her couch, the air being rendered less oppressive by the waving of the soft feather fan with which the monuments have made us familiar. Lastly, have we not Shakespeare’s glowing picture of the fanning of the voluptuous ‘serpent of old Nile,’ Cleopatra?

‘For her owne person,

It begger’d all description: she did lye

In her Pavillion, Cloth of Gold, of tissue,

O’er-picturing that Venus, where we see

The fancie out-worke nature; on each side her

Stood pretty-Dimpled boyes, like smiling Cupids,

With divers-colour’d fannes whose winde did seem

To glowe the delicate cheekes which they did coole,

And what they undid, did.’

UMBRELLA OR CANOPY OF THE CHARIOT OF RAMESES III.

FANS OF THE ANCIENTS—Continued

ASSYRIA

The employment of the fan in the religious ceremonies of Assyria has already been hinted at. There can be no possibility of doubt that the ceremonies and customs, both sacred and secular, connected with the fan, were common to all the countries of the East, these being the offspring of similar conditions and necessities. Thus we have in Assyrian sculpture frequent representations of the fly-whisk. On a bas-relief from Nimroud King Sennacherib is standing in his chariot superintending the moving of a colossal figure at the building of his palace at Kouyunjik, two attendants behind the chariot bearing an umbrella and fly-whisk; on another relief we see Assur-bani-pal standing, bow and arrow in hand, pouring out a libation over four dead lions before an altar, his umbrella-bearer and fly-flapper being in attendance. We are also introduced to the garden or palm-grove of Assur-bani-pal’s palace, wherein the king is being entertained by his queen at a banquet; the queen holding in her left hand what is evidently a small fan and of the shape and general appearance of the pleated fan, but probably rigid.

The royal fan-bearers were two in number, invariably eunuchs, their usual place being behind the monarch. The long-tasselled scarf appears to be the badge of the office, which was one of great dignity. Its holder was privileged to leave his station behind the throne and hand his master the sacred cup, the royal scent-bottle, or handkerchief, which latter article invariably appears in the left hand. The usage of this office seems to have been very similar to that of Egypt; in the absence of the vizier, or in

ASSYRIA PERSIA subordination to him, he introduced captives to the king, reading out their names from a scroll or tablet in his left hand.[15]

The matter of the ‘handkerchief’ opens up an important question. Sir George Birdwood, in a masterly address before the Society of Arts on the subject of ancient fans, says: ‘On a “marble” in the British Museum, from Kouyunjik (near Mossul, i.e. Nineveh), representing Sennacherib, B.C. 681-705, enthroned before Lachish, two attendants stand behind the throne, each waving in his right hand, over the monarch’s head, a murchal (fly-whisk) of undoubted peacocks’ feathers, and each bearing in his left hand what I identify

as the cover of the murchal. It is absurd to take it to be a pocket-handkerchief.’

On the other hand, Mr. S. W. Bushell, in his Handbook of Chinese Art, refers to the fan- and towel-bearers in the Chinese sculptures of the Han dynasty; these, although somewhat differing in shape from those of the Assyrian reliefs, evidently served a similar purpose.

It is an extremely difficult point to determine; in the reliefs of Assur-bani-pal at Susiana, of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, and others, two flabelliferæ walk behind the king’s chariot bearing in their right hands the fly-whisks, their left hands not being seen. Standing in the umbrella-covered chariot, immediately behind the king and charioteer, a figure bears a smaller handkerchief or cover in his right hand, but no evidence of a fly-whisk. The left hand in this instance also does not appear in the relief. In a representation of Assur-bani-pal in the Louvre (Layard, Monuments, Series II. Plate 51), the king holds in his right hand a small fan; an attendant behind holds the cover or handkerchief in his right hand, but no fly-whisk. These objects are in most instances fringed, and in some cases embroidered with a narrow border.

Assyrian fly-whisks were usually of feathers, set in a short handle of ivory, wood, or other material, carved or otherwise ornamented. There were two kinds, a smaller one which was a kind of brush, made of horse-hair or vegetable fibre, and a larger one of feathers; the short brush fan belongs to the earlier period, the long feathered form to the later.[16]

The two forms, however, appear at the same time. In the bas-relief of the banquet above referred to, attendants bear dishes of fruits and meats, each being provided with the small fly-whisk, evidently for the purpose of driving away insects from the royal dishes.

The ceremonies and usages connected with the fly-whisk open up a vast field of inquiry, far too involved to be adequately dealt with here; some few aspects may, however, be touched upon.

Baal-zebub, Beel-zebub, Beel-zebut, Bel-zebub, the Philistine god of Ekron, whom the Jews represented as Prince of Devils, was literally Lord Fly, or Lord of the Flies. When Ahaziah was sick he sent to consult the Lord Fly’s oracle.[17]

The word Baal simply means owner, master, or lord. In Phœnicia and Carthage it was the custom of kings and great men to unite their names with that of their god, as Hannibal, ‘grace of Baal,’ Hasdrubal, ‘help of Baal.’ Amongst the Jews also many names of cities were compounded with Baal; as Baal-Gad, Baal-Hammon, Baal-Thamar. In the ‘authorised version’ the name is Baal-zebub, afterwards changed to Beel-zebub; the original conception is, however, one of great difficulty and obscurity, unless, indeed, we may directly connect the worship of Baal with that of the sun. Josephus declares that the Assyrians erected the first statue of Mars, and worshipped him as a God, calling him Baal. We read in the book of Kings how Josiah destroyed the altars which had been reared by Manasseh, and ‘put down the idolatrous priests, ... them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven’; these instances suggesting that Baal and the sun were two separate deities. On the other hand, Baal-Hammon is represented on a Carthaginian monument with a crown of rays. Baalbek was called by the Greeks Heliopolis (sun-city) and at Baal-Shemeh (house of the sun) there was a temple to Baal.

If, therefore, we may regard Baal and the sun as synonymous, the matter is at once simplified, since the sun is the bringer of flies, and is in actual fact Lord of the Flies.

According to Pliny, the Cyrenians offered sacrifices to the fly-catching god Achor, because the flies bred pestilence, and this author remarks that no sooner is the sacrifice offered, than the flies perish.

The Greeks had their Jupiter Myiodes, or fly-hunter, to whom a bull was sacrificed in order to propitiate him in driving away the flies which infested the Olympic Games. There was also a Hercules Myiodes, the origin of whose worship Pausanias declares to have been the following:—Hercules, being molested by swarms of flies while he was about to offer sacrifice to Olympian Jupiter in the temple, offered a victim to that god under the name of Myagron, upon which all the flies flew away beyond the river Alpheus. Pausanias further refers to the festival of Athena at Aliphera in Arcadia, which was opened with a sacrifice and prayer to the Fly-catcher, and states that after the sacrifice, the flies gave no further trouble.

Ælian (Nat. An., xi. 8) affirms that at the festival of Apollo in the island of Leucas, an ox was sacrificed; the flies, glutted with the blood, gave no further trouble. The same author states that the flies of Pisa (Olympia) were more virtuous, because they did their duty, not for a consideration, but out of pure regard for the god.[18]

Scaliger derives the name of Beel-zebub, the false god, from Baalim-Zebabim, which signifies lord of sacrifices. This deity was worshipped during the time of our Saviour, who is accused by the Pharisees of casting out devils by Beel-zebub, the prince of the devils. So Holman Hunt, in his picture of the finding of the Saviour in the Temple, with fine perception, places a fly-whisk in the hand of a child.[19] A child is here propounding to his elders a purer and loftier system of ethics than had heretofore been dreamed of; a child, likewise, banishes the servants of Belial.

With the Jewish writers of the Middle Ages the worship of Baal frequently signified the practising of the rites of the Christian religion; thus Rabbi Joseph Ben Meir in his Chronicles states that Clovis forsook his God and worshipped Baal, and that a high place was built at Paris for Baal Dionysius, i.e. the Cathedral of St. Denis.[20]

The Assyrians employed the tall standard and sceptral fans in a precisely similar way to the Egyptians. In the restoration of the palace of Sargon (Khorsabad), compiled by Felix Thomas, given by Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria, vol. ii. p. 24, two enormous frond standards are placed at the entrance to the Harem Court, these being circular, formed of palm fronds in bronze gilt. ‘In India, as in Japan,’ to quote again Sir George Birdwood, ‘the standard is often blazoned with some totemistic, symbolical, or heraldic device, and it was probably so blazoned in Assyria, for from Assyria the practice spread to Greece and Rome of using such devices on both standards and shields. Later this ritual was revived by the Saracens, and was spread over mediæval Europe by the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land.’

The Assyrian disc-standards were probably of brass or other metal, fixed to the inside of the chariot. Two devices appear on the monuments—the Divine Archer standing on a bull, and two bulls running in opposite directions. These were enclosed in a circle at the end of a long staff ornamented with streamers and tassels.[21]

The Assyrians employed the primitive plaited fan, used in Egypt, both crescent-shaped, square, and triangular. On a relief from Nimroud, in the British Museum, in a circular arrangement divided into four compartments, representing the interior of a castle with towers and battlements, a eunuch is waving in his right hand, over a stand on which are vases and bowls, a square, flag-shaped fan, certainly of the plaited variety; in the left hand is what appears to be a fly-whisk.

On a silver dish in the Strogonoff collection illustrated in Orientalische Teppiche, Alois Riegl, a Sassanian monarch is seated, cross-legged, holding a tazza, and attended by two servitors, one of whom waves a plaited flag-fan of oblong shape. The dish, which bears strong traces of Indian influence, is probably of the period of Varannes II., A.D. 273-277.

The swinging-fan, suspended from the ceiling, and operated by pulling a cord, is an ancient device for cooling the air of rooms. The testimony of an Assyrian bas-relief from Nineveh indicates its use at the period to which these sculptures belong—seventh to tenth century B.C. Wicquefort, in his translation of the embassy of Garcias de Figueron, gives the name of fan to a kind of chimney or ventiduct, in use among the Persians, to furnish air and wind into their houses, without which the heat would be insupportable.[22]

A variant of this device for ventilating rooms is recorded in Chinese annals. Under the Han dynasty, B.C. 205-A.D. 25, a skilful workman at Ch’ang—and named Ting Huan—made a fan of seven large wheels 10 feet in diameter, the whole turned by a single man.

The luxurious Guez de Balzac, in the twentieth letter, written from Rome in 1621, to the Cardinal de la Villette, with his customary extravagant hyperbole, describes his method of guarding against the heat during the broiling month of July—‘Four servants constantly fan my apartments; they raise wind enough to make a tempestuous sea.’

FROM A BAS-RELIEF. (Nimroud.)

FANS OF THE ANCIENTS—Continued

GREECE AND ROME

In Greece, as in Egypt, the fan had a sacred as well as a secular use. M. Uzanne refers to the fan of feathers which those discreet and irreproachable ladies, the Vestals, made use of to fan the flame of their sacrifices, and, rather roguishly, seizes the idea of fanning the flame to suggest that of inward flames kindled by the arrows of the little god Cupid, in place of the chaste ardours of the sacred mysteries. The fans of the priests of Isis, when Isis was a Grecian divinity, were formed of the wings of a bird, attached to the end of a long wand, and thus made to resemble the caduceus of Mercury.

The Greeks received the fan from Egypt and Assyria through the Phœnicians, who were the traders between the east and the west. In the sarcophagus of Amanthus (Cyprio-Phœnician), representing a train of horsemen, footmen, and chariots, the horses’ heads are adorned with a pleated fan crest, similar to that which was used by the Persians; the figure in the first biga carries a parasol. Thus Perrot and Chipiez in their description of this monument: ‘The parasol which shades the head of the great person in the first biga is the symbol of Asiatic royalty: the fan-shaped plume which rises above the heads of all the chariot horses, is an ornament that one sees in the same position in Assyria and Lycia, when the sculptor desires to represent horses magnificently caparisoned.’

This remarkable example is of the highest interest as showing that the pleated form—in this instance, doubtless, rigid, and fixed to a short handle, also seen in both Egyptian and Assyrian monuments—has been employed from a very remote period.[23]

The earliest Greek fans were, doubtless, branches of the myrtle, acacia, the triple leaves of the Oriental plantain, and also the leaves of the lotus, which latter, together with the myrtle, were consecrated to Venus, were symbols of the dolce far niente, and therefore peculiarly appropriate to this instrument of reposeful ease. The myrtle bough was also used by the Romans, as we learn from Martial, iii. 82, serving at the same time as fan and fly-flap—

‘Et aestuanti tenue ventilat frigus

Supina prasino concubina flabello;

Fugátque muscas myrteâ puer virgâ.’

The single leaf or heart-shaped fan occurs constantly in Greek terra-cottas; a number of examples are to be seen in the British and other Museums. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a charming little winged Amor, draped, tripping gaily along, hiding his face behind a fan of this shape. Blondel refers to a female figure in the Louvre, seated at a feast, holding a leaf-fan; also in a fresco at Pompeii a figure is seen holding a fan which this author mistakes for that of a different shape, but which is really a perspective view of the plantain-leaf. We see the triform leaf-fan in the hands of a Tanagra figure in the collection of Louis Fould, illustrated in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts for 1860; this, as well as a number of Tanagra figures, evidently representing priestesses of Venus. It is impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy the material and construction of these fans: in some instances they are evidently stretched on a frame, and adorned with ornament either painted or embroidered; occasionally, also, the decorative motif is that of the natural veining of the leaf; the handles being usually very short, in many cases scarcely visible. The slight vestiges of colour remaining on these statuettes must in no instance be taken as suggesting the colouring of the original fans. The business of the Tanagra sculptor was to make a statuette and not a portrait of any particular fan; the colouring of the fan of the statuette would therefore be determined by the general colour scheme of which it formed a part.

The circular fan of peacocks’ feathers appears as early as the fifth century B.C., and even at this date had already been used in Asia Minor.

References to the feather-fan are of constant occurrence in the writings of Greek authors. A slave in the Orestes of Euripides exclaims: ‘After the Phrygian fashion I chanced with the close circle of feathers to be fanning the gale, that sported in the ringlets of Helen.’

Instances of the feather-fan are common on Greek vases,—on the Campanian Hydra (F. 212), British Museum, the shape in this instance being that of the reversed heart. In the fourth vase room, on an oil-flask, with Aphrodite seated in the lap of Adonis, a figure appears holding a very large fan, but similar in shape to the first mentioned; and on the Apulian Hydra, F. 352, a fan appears which is evidently a conventional representation of the peacock feather-fan. The long-handled fan was also adopted by the Greeks, these being waved by servants or attendants, as in Egypt.

The Etruscans, amongst whom the luxury of the fan is early seen, and who transmitted it later to the Romans, used the peacock feathers, of

FROM AN APULIAN HYDRA.
(British Museum.) different lengths, in a semicircle: such a fan appears on a large vase in the Louvre.

On an Etruscan crater, representing Heracles strangling the serpents, surrounded by the greater gods, a fan of plain feathers is held in the hand of one of the attendants. On a sarcophagus at Vulci, found in the winter of 1845-6, a female figure appears waving a large fan, ῥιπίς, identical in shape with fans used in India at the present day. In the Grotta del Sole e della Luna (tomb of the Sun and Moon) at Vulci, discovered in 1830, one of the ceilings has a singular fan-pattern, given in Mon. Ined. Inst., i. tav. xli., the counterpart of which is found in two tombs at Cervetri, whence we may conclude it was no uncommon decoration in Etruscan houses.[24]

In the Museo Gregorio, Rome, are half-a-dozen handles of fans, with holes for threads or wire, to tie in feathers or leaves.

‘The fashion of the fan,’ says M. de Linas,[25] ‘was probably introduced into Italy in the sixth century B.C. We learn from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that Aristodemus, tyrant of Cumæ, and ally of Porsenna, corrupted the youths of this town by making them effeminate buffoons, accompanied by followers who carried the flabellum and umbrella.’

The fan, although perhaps in less constant use by the Romans, was still an article of very general employment. In the Eunuchus of Terence we are introduced to a pretty scene in which the fan plays an important part. Chaerea is relating to Antipho his good fortune with the fair Thais:

Chaerea. While I was revolving these things in my mind, the virgin meanwhile was called away to bathe; she goes, bathes, and returns, after which they laid her on a couch; I stand waiting to see if they had any orders for me. At last, one came up and said—‘Here, Dorus, take this fan, and, while we are bathing, fan her thus. When we have done you may bathe too, if you have a mind.’ I take it very demurely.

Antipho. I could have then wished to see that impudent face of thine, and the awkward figure so great a booby must make holding a fan.

Chaerea. Scarce had she done speaking, when in a moment they all hurried out of the room, and ran to the bath in a noisy manner, as is usual when masters are absent. Meantime, the virgin falls asleep. I steal a private glance thus, with the corner of my eye, through the fan; at the same time look round everywhere, to see if the coast was quite clear....

The Romans employed the fly-flap (muscarium) formed of peacocks’ feathers, which was often provided with a long handle, so that the fan could be waved by a servant (flabellifer), who protected his mistress from the insects during sleep.

Plautus, Trinummus, II. i., refers to these flabilliferae, but in this instance the term is obviously applied to female fan-bearers.

Propertius, II. xxiv. 11, speaks of flabella of the tail feathers of the peacock.

The peacock fly-flap is also referred to by Martial, xiv. 67:

‘What, from thy food, repels profaning flies,

Strutted, a gorgeous train, with Gemmy eyes.’

‘Lambere quae turpes prohibet tua prandia muscas,

Alitis eximiae cauda superba fuit.’

The same author, III. lxxii. 10-11, says of Zoilus that when overcome by the heat, a pleasant coolness is wafted about him with a leek-green flabellum.

The Romans also adopted the tail of the yak, but this last, which appears to have been imported from India, was not so commonly used as the tabellæ, a species of fan of square or circular shape, formed of precious wood or very finely cut ivory, referred to by Ovid in the third book of his Amores. ‘Wouldst thou,’ he exclaims, ‘have an agreeable zephyr to refresh thy face? This tablet agitated by my hand will give you this pleasure.’ Those also were the fans the young Roman exquisites carried when accompanying their mistresses along the Via Sacra, fanning them gallantly, representations of which appear on vases in the Louvre.[26]

Propertius, also, in the fourth book of his Elegies, represents Hercules as seated at the feet of Omphale, fan in hand.

FROM AN ETRUSCAN VASE.
(British Museum.)

CHAPTER III

FANS OF THE FAR EAST

INDIA

It is difficult for the Western mind to realise the degree of importance assumed by the fan, the fly-flap, and the umbrella, in the countries of the Far East, especially India; these objects being regarded with an affection almost, indeed actually, amounting to reverence. Its primal cause is to be found in the overpowering insistence of the sun’s rays, and the sense of grateful relief afforded by shade and disturbance of the air. To discover its origin we must look back, beyond the age of legendary lore, to actual mythology, when we find representations of the Puranic snake gods of India with the sacred umbrella over their heads, attended by Cherubim waving the fan and the fly-flap. Similarly we find the sacred five- or seven-headed cobra itself assuming the office of sunshade, uprearing its hood to form a canopy for Buddha or for the Hindoo gods.

In the Mahábhárata, the ancient epic of Hindostan, we have a description of the death of the monarch Pândou, in which great crowds assemble at the bier to do homage to the dead, bringing offerings of fly-flaps and white umbrellas, the latter having each a hundred ribs of pure gold, the donors thereby ensuring for themselves a place in Paradise.

In the same epic, the poet represents the sacred Karna, in the midst of the acclamations of victory, seated majestically upon his throne, beneath the emblems of the umbrella, the fan, and the fly-flap; these being regarded as the most solemn symbols of state throughout the East.

Thus, the title of the King of Burmah is ‘Lord of the twenty-four umbrellas,’ this being the number always borne before the Emperor of China upon every state occasion, and accompanying him even to the hunting-field.[27]

The connection between this umbrella-reverence and primitive tree-worship is abundantly established, both having their origin in climatic conditions. On the Sanchi Tope is figured the sacred flowering Sal tree (beneath which Gautama Buddha died at Kasia), surmounted by two Chhatras, these, together with the tree, being adorned with garlands. Again, on the Great Tope at Buddha Gaya, B.C. 250, erected in front of the sacred Bo tree (Ficus religiosa), beneath which Gautama attained to the Buddhahood, are umbrellas hung with garlands. Also in a Thibetan picture of the death of Gautama given in Dr. Waddell’s Buddhism of Thibet, we see a garlanded and festooned umbrella in the centre over Buddha, with attendants waving fly-flaps, and on the right a large standard fan.

So deeply rooted, indeed, is the reverence for the umbrella, and so completely in the minds of the populace are these objects identified with regal power, that, upon the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII.) to India, it was deemed necessary for his Royal Highness to appear beneath a golden umbrella on an elephant in order that his sovereign dignity might be demonstrated.

In the manuscript of Nieder Muenster of Ratisbon, now in the library at Munich, we find a curious blending of the tree and umbrella form, introduced as accessories in representations of the four evangelists, doubtless merely intended as conventional floral forms, but evidently the work of some monkish illuminator who had become influenced by Oriental mythology.

In Ratisbon, also, is an illumination of Christ bearing the cross, to one arm of which is attached a half-closed umbrella, reproduced in Curiosités Mystérieuses. ‘Le pommeau,’ says the chronicler, ‘est orné de ce que les Romains nomment Ombrellino (petit dais en parasol). S’il s’agissait à coup sûr de ce baldaquin (qui est le propre de certains dignitaires) nous pourrions rappeler que ce mot figurait déjà dans l’étiquette impériale avant Constantin.’[28]

On Attic and other Greek vases of the third and fourth century B.C., to quote Sir George Birdwood, it is often very difficult to distinguish the fan from the umbrella. ‘Where it is distinctly an umbrella, it is either of the peaked Assyrian form, or of the dome-(‘rondel’ of Valentijin, etc., and ‘arundels’ of Fryer) topped Indian form (chhatra); and when it is distinctly a fan, it is usually of the Indian type, determined by the fan palm frond and the peacock feather, and rarely of the Egyptian type determined by the date-palm and the ostrich feather.’

In the early Persian bas-reliefs, says Chardin in his Voyages, the kings of Persia are frequently represented in the act of mounting on horseback surrounded by beautiful slaves; the duty of one being that of holding an umbrella over the head of the monarch. This, not only for the purpose of protecting the sovereign from the rays of the sun, but also to demonstrate his absolute right of life and death over both prisoners and subjects.

Umbrellas formed an important feature in the Greek Bacchic processions. Aristophanes refers to white umbrellas and baskets, signifying pomp and joy, as being intended to recall to men the acts of Ceres and Proserpine, and constantly borne by virgins at all religious ceremonials.

In a miniature in the Royal Library at Paris, of Sivaji on the march, a sayiban or sun-fan is seen, having an arrangement of drapery in form of a curtain or valance.[29] Here we discover a point of contact between the fan and the umbrella, although it is probable that in this instance its use as a shade-giving instrument had not developed.

A much closer form-connection, however, between fan and umbrella is seen in the simple leaf section of the Palmyra palm, cut level at the top, used by the natives in most parts of India. This assumes exactly the shape of the pleated fan, the pleating formed by Nature’s deft hands. The large Cingalese umbrella used by headsmen and at weddings is of the same shape, made of the young leaves of the talipot palm, often richly decorated with plaited patterns in various colours, and with mica inlay. Of similar form, also, is the sacred processional parasol of the Indian Mussulmans (Shia sect) and the Hindus.

The fan, therefore, must be considered as part of a continuous development from the umbrella symbol of might and power, employed equally in the East as in the West, and the infinitude of military and processional fan-like standards and sceptral fans, to the hand-fan and fly-whisk.

We discover a direct affinity between the hissing of the wind through the open metal mouth and silken bag of the Roman Dragon standard, and the beating of the wings of the Norse Raven, used for a similar purpose; between the Assyrian disc standards with the divine archer standing on the sacred bull, and the cruciferal discs employed at a more

CINGALESE SĒSATA (Made of the leaf of the talipot palm, enriched with plates of mica, the handle lacquered wood; length, including handle, 7 feet.) recent date in Christian Church ceremonial; between the chauri waved over the head of Krishna, and the wafting of divine influence by the angelic attendants upon the Saviour in early Christian missal-painting.

The alums or allums used in the Moharram procession in India are analogous to the standards used by the Greeks and Romans, and those figured on the gates of the Sanchi Tope, consisting not only of flags and banners, but of all sorts of devices in metal, raised on the top of a long staff and carried to battle.[30]

The Cingalese Sēsata, a ceremonial fan for royal and religious use, or for attendance upon great personages, consists of an embroidered cloth disc, or talipot leaf, decorated with images of the sun, moon, etc., with mica and other materials introduced, mounted on a lacquered staff. Tenants of the first rank attend the Disvāta (lord chief) on journeys, convey his orders, carrying the great banner, state umbrella, and Sēsata.[31] A smaller disc-fan, the disc covered with crimson velvet, the handle about fifteen inches long, of carved ivory, richly inlaid, occurs in the Louvre.

The royal standard, banner, or ensign, employed in India, composed of peacocks’ feathers, is illustrated in a MS. copy of the Akbar-Namah (c. 1597), the form being circular, and also that of a somewhat elongated semicircle.

The fly-flap, chowr, chowrie, chourie, chaurie, is next in dignity to the umbrella, and was in the first instance devoted to the service of the

gods. On a bas-relief of the pagoda of Elephanta, described by the Orientalist Langlés in his History of Hindostan, a servant is seen behind Brahma and Indra holding in each hand chauries or fly-whisks. In the India Museum is a charming little chaurie with silver handle and ribbons of silver gauze tipped with red silk, used by Jains to drive away insects from their idol without destroying them.

Chauries are formed of various materials—of ivory, the strips of which are sometimes cut to incredible fineness for such a substance; in these cases the handles are formed of the same material, richly carved—of the bushy tail of the

(From a painting on talc. Madras. Nineteenth century.) Himalayan yak, both black and white, the handles either of metal, ivory, or wood—of sandalwood, also cut into the finest possible strips, the handles richly carved; the waving of these chauries emitting a fine fragrance—of the stripped quills of the larger birds, more generally the peacock—of horse-hair and the various grasses. The handles were often formed of the horns of various animals; an example occurs in the Horniman Museum, in which instance it is the antelope. The chaurie from the tail of the yak was in ancient India fixed upon a gold or ornamented shaft between the ears of the war-horse, like the plume of the war-horse of chivalry; the banner or banneret, with the device of the chief, rose at the back of the car. ‘The waving chaurie on the steed’s broad brow points backwards, motionless as a picture.’[32]

This, it will be seen, is in strict conformity to the usage of the ancient Egyptians, who employed the tall fan emblem in a precisely similar way; these proud plumes serving a double purpose—an ornamental, and, in the case of Egypt, even an heraldic purpose, and also the purely utilitarian one of affording the animal some relief from fly pests.

The peacock has ever been regarded as a sacred bird, both by the peoples of the East and the West. The Greek fable of Argus the hundred-eyed, the sleepless guardian of Io, serves to connect the idea of extreme vigilance with that of true kingship, i.e. the universal preserver and father of the people. The peacock therefore presented a double significance to the minds of the Hindu peoples; it expressed the vigilance of kingship together with its magnificence. The peacock feather emblem of royalty is the sign or insignia of the king’s high office, and the

EMBLEM OF ROYALTY
(From an illumination of a Court reception by the King of Oudh.) principal evidence of his sovereignty: wherever a king appears he is accompanied by an attendant bearing this emblem, which appears in all pictorial or other representations of royalty.

It was, doubtless, in the first instance a fly-flap, and is either composed entirely of feathers, or, it consists of a bunch of feathers enclosed two-thirds of the distance in a silver casing, usually ornamented with an imbricated pattern; the handle also of silver. Several examples of this object appear in the India Museum, and numberless representations occur in sculpture, illumination, embroidery, etc.

The poet Valmiki tells of the sumptuous sceptre, studded with jewels, prepared for the sacrifices to Rama—a magnificent fan with a radiant garland resembling the full moon in the clear night sky.

The word punkhá, or pankhá, from pankh, a feather, a bird, is a generic term applied in India to all fans, pankhi meaning a small fan. This derivation serves as an indication of the early use of the plumed fan in India, which divides honours with the palm-leaf fan in point of antiquity, and doubtless also as suggesting a similarity between the beating of a bird’s wings and the movement of the fan.

The earliest plumed fans probably consisted of a pair of complete wings set shoulder to shoulder, resembling the caduceus of Mercury, which was regarded as a symbol of happiness, peace, and concord, the wings expressing diligence.

Feather-fans assume all manner of shapes, as the large round banner-fans already referred to; the familiar crescent-like form with a short

ROYAL STANDARDS
(From a MS. copy of the Akbar-Namah. Sixteenth century.) handle set horizontally at its base; and the various hand-screens, these either composed entirely of peacocks’ feathers, the breast and neck feathers forming a pattern in the centre, with a border of tail feathers; or, the centre formed of plaited pith and cane of various colours, beetles’ wings, etc., with the border again of feathers; the handles being of cane or wood, or of wood covered with cane strippings or other material.

In Persia and Arabia, from the first centuries of our era, fans were made of ostrich feathers, many being ornamented with that form of inscription which is such a leading feature of the decorative art of these countries.

The crescent-shaped hand-fan also dates from a very early period. In its primitive form, it is seen in the painted decoration of the Buddhist

HAND-FAN
(From the cave paintings at Ajanta.) cave-temples of Ajanta (first century B.C. to eighth century A.D.), the example given being probably ornamented with strips or panels of mica, the constructional portion of cane or pith.

A variant of this form, still more simple in its construction, is seen in one of the sculptured roundels of the Buddhist tope at Amaravati, Southern India, circa second century A.D.; an attendant upon a great personage waves a circular fan, having the handle stretched across the face,

PLAITED GRASS-FAN
(From the Amaravati Tope.) with a circular opening near the lower edge to enable the handle to be gripped. All the foregoing types obtain at the present day, and are as modern as they are ancient.

The flag form of fan is, if possible, a still more remarkable instance of the persistence of certain decorative motifs throughout long periods of the world’s history. This type, again, is in use at the present day—the page of examples illustrated are of the mid-nineteenth century—this

FLAG-FAN
(From the cave paintings at Ajanta.) identical form appears in the wall-paintings at Ajanta;[33] it is also seen in Egyptian and Assyrian sculptured reliefs; it was employed by the Copts from the third to the sixth century, and earlier in Arabia; it was in general use in Italy during the period of the Renaissance. There can be no possibility of doubt that this form of fan was common to the whole of the East and to a greater portion of the West, and has endured throughout the centuries.

These fans are of two kinds—rigid and flexible; in

1. ‘TALAPAT’ FAN
2. PANKHÂ. (Embroidered velvet, with silver handle. Moorshedabad. India Museum.)
3. FROM AN ILLUMINATION both instances they are invariably plaited, the material being stripped palm, bamboo, ivory, peacock quills, etc. The rigid variety is often placed loose in the handle, to allow of its being swung round and round like a policeman’s rattle. See illustration opposite.

The hatchet or halberd shape is a development of the flag form, and varies from the simple blade to that of a highly ornamental shape. The material is silk, velvet, cloth or other tissue, often richly embroidered with gold and silver thread, spangles, beetles’ wings, etc., with a fringe of either silver tinsel or peacocks’ feathers; the handles being of wood, cane, or silver. These are at present largely made at Delhi.

Occasionally the fan is entirely formed of threaded glass beads of various colours forming a pattern upon a wire framework, with a fringe of tinsel, the handle also overlaid with beads.

The primitive palm-fan occurs on the oldest Hindostani bas-reliefs, and is described by the poets. This primeval fan still forms part of the attire of certain Buddhist priests in Siam, and from it they take their name of ‘Talapoins’; the fan’s name being ‘talapat,’ or ‘palm-tree-leaf’ in the Siamese language.

This form (the reversed heart) is common to both the smaller hand-fans and the larger ceremonial and processional fans. The natural palm-leaf is employed, trimmed to the required shape, and used either plain, or painted in brilliant colours, or forming a base for a covering of embroidery, feathers or stuffs, as in the example from Moorshedabad (illustrated), which is of velvet, embroidered with silver.

These fans are of two kinds—rigid and flexible; in

FAN OF GOLD
(Forming portion of the Burmese Regalia. India Museum.) The lateral form, in which the leaf is set sidewise on the stem, follows the same principle of decorative development. It is used plain, painted, inlaid with talc as in the example illustrated, is embroidered with silk, spangles, beetles’ wings, etc.; it also supplies the shape or decorative motif for fans of a different material, as in the instance of the four long-handled fans, forming portion of the Burmese regalia, obtained from Mandalay in 1885, examples of a barbaric splendour only to be found in the gorgeous East. These are of gold, jewelled with rubies and the ‘nan-ratan’ or nine stone, the handles overlaid with gold and also jewelled.

Amongst fans formed of the more precious materials is a disc-shaped fan of gold, set with cabochon sapphires, an offering dedicated by Kīrti Ṡri to the ‘Tooth relic.’[34] Figured in Mediæval Sinhalese Art, A. K. Coomaraswarmy.

In the collection of the Baroness Salomon de Rothschild at Paris is a fan of jade, richly studded with jewels.

Fans are also made of the sweet-scented Khaskhás root (Andropogon muricatus), and as these are generally used after being wetted, they impart to the air a cool fragrance; they are often highly ornamented with gold and silver spangles, gold thread, tinsel, beetles’ wings, etc., and occasionally provided with ivory handles. A pretty example occurs at Kew, where there is an excellent collection of fans made of the various vegetable substances. Fans of talc, decorated with exquisite illumination, were made at Tanjore during the eighteenth century. Specimens occur in the India Museum, South Kensington.

PORTION OF AN EMBROIDERED MUSLIN NAPKIN.
(Chamba. Nineteenth century.)

Representations of the fan are of constant occurrence in Indian work, both illumination, embroidery, sculpture, and other material. On a curiously primitive embroidered napkin from Chamba, we are introduced to the worship of a Hindu deity—a king and queen are kneeling under a palm-tree, the god Ganesh in the distance with flag-fan; an attendant bears the peacock feather emblem of royalty, a second attendant waves a large heart-shaped fan. On a small mat or pad of enamelled leather (Hyderabad, nineteenth century), we see a whimsical combination of Krishna and his damsels forming the similitude of an elephant, the umbrella, pankhá, and two fly-flappers being in evidence.

A beautiful illumination from a MS. copy of the Akbar-Namah, above quoted, shows a prince seated upon his throne in the act of receiving offerings; an attendant waves a fly-flap behind the throne, a second attendant bears one of the large pankhás beautifully embroidered in gold and colours.

We are also in another illumination introduced to a beautiful flowered parterre, in which a Mongol princess is seated before a rippling fountain; attendants wait upon her with fruits, vases containing unguents, spices, etc.; behind, a female attendant waves the fly-flap.

In the decoration of the entrance gate of the temple at Ajmir, a prince appears in a howdah on the back of an elephant, an attendant sits behind waving a fly-flap, a second flabellifer is seated on the head of the animal; the prince himself holds a small fan in his hand, an attendant on foot bears the pankhá, and another the insignia of royalty.

Fair and delicate though these creations of Eastern ingenuity may be, the genius of Oriental imagery and fancy has discovered for us a still more delicate and effective instrument—a Sanskrit poet recounts a graceful fable of a princess of extreme beauty, who, although constantly attending and fanning the divine fire with a view to increasing the prosperity of her father, never succeeded in producing a flame save by the breath of her charming lips.

FANS OF THE FAR EAST—Continued

CHINA

CIRCULAR FAN
‘Like the Moon’ borne by the guard of an Imperial concubine. Chinese authorities are at variance concerning the invention of the fan, which has been attributed to the Emperor Hsien Yüan, B.C. 2697; to the Emperor Shun, B.C. 2255, and to the first ruler of the Chou dynasty, B.C. 1122.

According to a Chinese legend, it had its origin at the Feast of Lanterns, where, on an occasion when the heat became particularly oppressive, the beautiful daughter of a mandarin took off her mask, and agitated it so as to fan the air into a gentle breeze; the rest of the fair revellers were so much struck with the grace of the motion that they one and all let fall their masks and followed the example of the mandarin’s daughter.

The earliest fans were of the dyed feathers of various birds, and those of the peacock. We have an account of a present of two fans of feathers of ‘tsio rouge,’ offered to the Emperor Tchao-wang of the Chou dynasty, B.C. 1052, by the King of Thou-sieou, and it is affirmed in the ‘Tchéou-li’ that one of the chariots of the empress carried a feather-fan for the purpose of keeping the wheels free from dust.

The poet Thou-fou, in the ‘Song of Autumn,’ refers to fans of pheasants’ feathers as in royal use. The Emperor Kao-Tsong, of the Chang dynasty, 1323-1266 B.C., having heard the cry of the pheasant, an omen of good luck, resolved thenceforth to use only fans composed of the tail feathers of this bird.

These have continued in the service of royalty to a late period. A wing-shaped example, set laterally in a red lacquered handle, appearing

FROM A PAINTED ROLL OF MING DYNASTY.
(British Museum.) in the hand of an attendant, in a fine painted roll, by Ch’in Ying of the Ming dynasty, illustrating the occupations of Court ladies, the larger feathers numbering seven, this being the sacred number composing the fan, which is the attribute of Chung-li Ch’uan, one of the eight Taoist Immortals, the seven broad feathers corresponding to the constellation of seven stars on the left of the moon (Great Bear), the seat in the Taoist heavens of their supreme deity, Shang Ti, round whom all the other star gods circulate in

FAN OF HSI WANG MU
(From a Japanese painting. British Museum.) homage. This fan is illustrated on the large lacquered screen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, representing the Taoist Genii worshipping the god of Longevity, and constantly figures in pictorial and other representations.

Similar fans with several rows of pointed feathers appear in painted and decorative work; a curious example being seen in a large drawing from Tonkin (Louvre). The outer row of feathers, white and pale blue; the second, yellow; the third, those of the peacock; the body of the fan, green, red, white, and blue.

In the lacquered screen above referred to, a large fan of this character is waved over the head of one of the devotees riding aloft on a cloud, wending his way towards the mountain paradise, the home of the God.

The feather-fan is one of the chief attributes of Hsi Wang Mu, the famed Queen of the Genii (Royal Mother of the West), whose dwelling was a mountain palace in Central Asia, where she held Court with her fairy legions and received the great Taoist Rishis and certain favoured mortals, and whose amours with the Han Emperor Wu Ti have given much occupation for both author and artist.[35]

Her fan is borne by one of her four handmaidens, who, like the Dêva Kings of Mount Sumeru, are severally related to the four points of the compass. It assumes various shapes, as that of a wing, in the

WHITE PLUMED FAN OF HSI WANG MU
(From a painting of the Chinese School of Japan. British Museum.) painting by a pupil of Itcho riū of the Japanese popular school, British Museum, 1722; a bunch of long pointed plumes set in a bamboo handle, in the painting (Chinese School of Japan, British Museum, 778), in which a young girl in deer-skin, standing beneath the sacred peach-tree of the Immortals, offers the fruit to the goddess who, with her attendant bearing the fan, appears upon a cloud above the waves.

The queen is also represented with the large pear-shaped screen, as in the painting of the same school, British Museum, 1022, the screen decorated with the sun, moon, and clouds. In the painting previously referred to (No. 1722), the goddess herself holds a smaller pear-shaped screen. Each of the ‘fore-mentioned paintings are Japanese, but the fan forms are, unquestionably, taken from older Chinese originals.

The earliest illustrations, however, of this personage and her fan, and probably the oldest representations of fans in Chinese art, are those of the sculptures of the Han dynasty, B.C. 206-A.D. 25. In these, Hsi-wang Mu, wearing a coroneted hat, is attended by ladies carrying cup, mirror, and fan. On the same relief the Emperor Mu Wang of the Chou dynasty, B.C. 1001, is attended by a servitor with fan and towel or handkerchief. In the frieze forming the lower part of the relief, we see the ‘Chariot of the Sage’ preceded by two men on foot, with staves and fans.

PEAR-SHAPED SCREENS
(From paintings in the British Museum.)

On another of these reliefs, representing the discovery of one of the sacred bronze tripods, the ancient palladia of the kingdom, the two commissioners deputed by the Emperor to superintend its recovery from the river are attended by servitors bearing fans. These are the small hand-screens (pien-mien) described by M. Rondot as being larger in the upper part, their shape approaching that of a reversed trapezium with the angles rounded off.

This same author refers to four screens of white jade (regarded by the Chinese as the most precious of precious stones), the handles of an odoriferous amber, that were offered by the Emperor Chun-Hi of the Southern Sung dynasty, 1174-1190, to his Empress. At this time the screens were ornamented with incrustation and inscription, which was much esteemed, and this author quotes a curious passage from the Annals of the Thsi to the effect that Wang-sun-pen, of Kin-ling, represented in the space of a few inches a perspective view of rivers, mountains, valleys, and plains, stretching over a thousand miles of land. These screen pictures are referred to in the Ku yü t’ou pu, an illustrated catalogue of ancient jade, in one hundred books, compiled in 1176 by an imperial commission headed by Lung Ta-Yuan, President of the Board of Rites.

The small hand-screens assume a variety of forms—circular, pear-shaped, heart-shaped, etc., and are made of various materials, as—(1) The natural palm leaf, seen in the Chinese painting, British Museum, 37. (2) The palm leaf cut to various shapes, with a bamboo handle running up the middle, as in the Japanese example given on page 61. (3) Of bamboo; from Chinese records we learn that on the fifth day of the fifth month of the year corresponding to our 219, the Emperor presented to the members of the Imperial Academy a fan of bamboo, carved and painted blue. There is also a record of an existing fan of oblong form, made of bamboo leaf, ornamented with bulrushes, an inscription on the field of the fan. This dates from the sixth century A.D. (4) Of the turtle shell: the two portions held together with metal plates, with a wooden or other handle, examples of which occur in the Musée Guimet, Paris. (5) Of silk stretched upon a frame, with painted or other decoration, as in the two charming examples illustrated from the collection of Mr. W. Crewdson. Both front and reverse are given: the latter decorated in that system of feather-work much affected by the Chinese, and in which they display great skill. The feathers are usually the turquoise tinted plumes of the kingfisher: in the present instance the design is alternated by an imbrication of peacocks’ feathers. The handles are of carved ivory.

There are also the cockade screens, usually of ivory or sandalwood.

Representations of the earlier large ceremonial banner screens appear on a carved pedestal of a Buddhist image, Northern Wei dynasty, A.D. 524; these are oval in form, and are seen in both sculptured and painted representations down to recent times.

In the Musée Guimet in Paris is a large fan of red lacquer framework (reversed heart shape) enclosing a series of metal ribs through which the wind plays; in the centre are painted dragons.

Among the painted representations in the India Museum, of objects from the Summer Palace at Pekin, is a circular screen, ‘like the moon,’ borne by the guard of an imperial concubine. See illustration, p. 46.

A favourite device for the decoration of these larger screens is that of the fabled Phœnix, the Ho bird of the Japanese. This is seen in the painting of the Chinese school of Japan, British Museum, 822, in which one of the two attendants on a Chinese Emperor carries a long oval screen bordered with peacocks’ feathers, and ornamented with two Phœnixes.[36]

We therefore perceive that the ceremonies and customs relating to the fan, no less than the various forms which this instrument assumed, were practically identical with the ancient peoples of the East and West;—the same order of development, having its origin in the natural suggestion afforded by the wings of birds and of the broader leaved plants; the fans of the Han dynasty reliefs, their exact counterpart being found in Egypt and Assyria; the rigid hand-screens corresponding to those tabellæ which the Romans derived from the Greeks, who in turn received them

from the peoples of Asia Minor, and which, doubtless, had their origin in the more remote East; the employment of the fan in both religious and civil ceremonial and in war.[37]

Among the Bat Bu’u (eight precious things) carried at the end of staves by the inhabitants of Annam in their ceremonial processions, is a fan (Quat) symbolising the graceful perfection of the form of woman, and the light breeze that tempers the heat of the summer sun.[38] These Bat Bu’u are made in three ways—

1. Of carved wood lacquered and gilt.
2. Of tin or pewter.
3. In the form of transparencies to be lighted from within.

A huge wooden fan is carried as part of the insignia of a mandarin’s procession.[39]

The invention of the folding-fan is generally credited to the ingenious little inhabitants of the land of the rising sun; its date, however, as well as its precise character, is impossible to determine with anything approaching to accuracy. Tradition says that it was designed by an artist who lived in the reign of the Emperor Jen-ji, about 670 A.D., and was formed upon the principle of the construction of a bat’s wing, this being in conformity with the general usage of Japanese designers, who derived their artistic motifs from natural constructive forms. The date of its introduction into China is also a matter of considerable uncertainty: we have a reference to it in a Chinese work of the date 960, to the effect that the tsin-theou-chen, or folding-fan, was introduced by Tchang-ping-hai, and was supposed to be offered as a tribute by the barbarians of the south-east, who came, holding in their hands the pleated fan, which occasioned much laughter and ridicule. All Chinese authors agree, however, that it was the invention of foreigners, i.e. the Japanese, who, together with the Tartars, possessed folding-fans before they were known in China.[40]

M. Rondot records the fact that at first, only courtesans made use of folding-fans, honest women carried round screens.[41]

Since the appearance of the folding-fan, various materials have been pressed into its service, including ivory, tortoise-shell, lacquer, mother of pearl, the various woods—especially sandalwood, the more precious metals, silk, skin, and paper.

No nation possesses a keener appreciation of ivory as a vehicle for artistic expression than the Chinese, whose carved balls in concentric spheres of open work are the wonder of western peoples. Ivory fans date from a very remote period, it is believed as early as 990 B.C., and are marvels of patient ingenuity.

The Imperial Ivory Works within the palace at Peking was founded toward the close of the seventeenth century, and became the centre for the best production in this delicate material.

Ivory fans are either of pierced flat open work, or elaborately carved with subjects, the backgrounds of which are formed by delicate ribbing, imparting a lightness and softness to the fan not obtainable by any other means. An extraordinarily skilful example is the cockade-fan in the Wyatt collection at South Kensington; this, together with several others in the same collection, have monograms in cursive European characters, and were executed to the order of Europeans. In each instance the blades are connected by means of a ribbon running through the whole. One

example only of these fans is given; that bearing the word ‘Angela’—fitting name of the gentle lady whose memory is revered wherever the English language is spoken.

Tortoise-shell is carved with the same consummate skill as ivory, and on the same principle of delicate piercing and ribbing. Two such fans occur in the Wyatt collection, profusely decorated in relief with figures of horsemen, buildings, boats, and flowers. The material, which is softened both by warm water and dry heat, is obtained from the loggerhead turtle of the Malay Archipelago and Indian Ocean, and imported to Canton, a centre both for tortoise-shell and ivory workers. An extremely effective and picturesque fan is that in the same collection, formed of the feathers of the Argus pheasant, cut short to the fan shape, the sticks of carved tortoise-shell. In this the colours of the feathers harmonise extremely well with the translucent red brown of the tortoise-shell.

This material is also lacquered, one of the earliest and most prized of the Chinese arts, and the technique of which is fully described in the Ko ku yao lun, a learned work on antiquities published in the reign of Hung Wu, the founder of the Ming dynasty, 1387. This substance is obtained from the lac-tree (Rhus vernicifera), cultivated for the purpose throughout Central and Southern China. The tree exudes a resinous sap that becomes black upon its exposure to the air, the sap being extracted from the tree at night, during the summer months, and dried, ground, and strained through hempen cloth to an evenly flowing liquid, which is applied by the brush.

Gold plays an important part both in the composition of the lacquer itself, to which it imparts a richness and pellucidity which is extremely beautiful, and also in its subsequent decoration. The fan and case of Canton lacquer in the Wyatt collection are richly decorated with panels of buildings and gardens, on a diapered background, overlaid with flowers, butterflies, and other devices, and are excellent examples of Chinese gold lacquer, an art which, although originating in China, has been somewhat neglected, and has, at a later period, been brought by the Japanese to a greater perfection than the Chinese have at any time attained.

Sandalwood is largely employed for fans, on account of its lightness, the ease with which it is worked, and also its fine aroma. The tree is indigenous to India, and is imported by the Chinese, who employ it for a variety of purposes, including the perfumed joss-sticks which are common throughout the East. These fans are worked on the same principle of flat piercing as those of ivory. They are also carved in relief, but can scarcely be said to rival the last-named substance with its delicate variety of translucent softness. The large fan at South Kensington is a good example.

Mother of pearl is a favourite material for fan-sticks on account of its beautiful play of iridescent colour. A number of fans of Chinese workmanship, both of mother of pearl and ivory, have found their way to Europe and have been remounted. Such a fan is that in the Wyatt collection with a subject finely painted on chicken skin by Eugène André.

Bamboo has already been referred to as in early use. It is extensively employed for the cheaper fans on account of its durability as well as cheapness. The number of ribs vary from sixteen to thirty-six; the former may be regarded as the standard number.

The art of filigree is practised by the Chinese with the most consummate skill; it is occasionally in gold, but more often in silver gilt, the gilding being employed for the double purpose of preventing tarnishing and for decorative effect. Filigree work is often enriched by means of inlay, either enamel, or the turquoise feathers of the kingfisher, which latter, however, are merely gummed on the surface of the metal, and, as a consequence, are wanting in durability.

Enamelling has been practised in western Asia from a very early period, i.e. previous to the Christian era, and is believed to have reached China about the thirteenth century. There are two kinds, both accomplished by the process known as incrustation—cloisonné, in which the pattern is raised on the surface of the metal by soldering on to it metal or wire strips of copper, silver, or gold, thus forming a series of cells or cloisons; and champlevé, in which the cell-walls enclosing the pattern are either modelled and cast, or cut and hollowed out of the metal itself by means of graving tools: in both, the pattern is filled in with enamel.

Of the colours, there are two well-contrasted shades of blue—a dark tint made from cobalt and resembling the lapis-lazuli tone, and a light sky blue or turquoise; several greens made from copper, a dark coral red, a fine yellow, black, and white.

Chinese enamels are usually fired in the open courtyard, protected only by a primitive cover of iron network, the charcoal fire being regulated by a number of men standing round with large fans in their hands.[42]

Of the interesting fans in which the combined arts of filigree and enamel are employed we give a charming example from the Wyatt collection at South Kensington. In this, the effective colour scheme is that of the two blues and gold; the design being a conventional rendering of a Phœnix and foliage. In the colour plate given of the fan in the collection of Mr. M. Tomkinson, the leaf has a large cartouche in the centre representing a Chinese garden, with the hostess welcoming a visitor who has arrived on horseback, the servant bringing tea. On either side are small medallions of a sun-dial and a broken column, evidently introduced to the order of a European patron.

Of the familiar class of fans having large compositions of figures of which the heads are of applied ivory, painted, the costumes of silk appliqué, the sticks of ivory elaborately carved, the example illustrated from the collection of Mr. Burdett-Coutts belonged to a mandarin of the first rank. A beautiful example was formerly in the possession of H.I.M. the Empress Eugénie,[43] the stick of sandalwood. The brins of these fans, twelve in number, are occasionally varied, as follows:—Two of white ivory, pierced and carved; two of silver filigree and enamel; two of ivory, pierced and carved, coloured scarlet; two of tortoise-shell, carved and pierced; two of engraved white pearl; and two of gilt filigree enamel. The panaches of gilt filigree, with silver dragons in relief. An example occurs in the collection of Mr. Messel, another was in the possession of the late Mr. R. W. Edis.

Almost every important city or district in China has its characteristic fan—something distinctive in the make, colour, or ornamentation of the folding-fan, which is the fan par excellence in the Chinese mind. The convenience of this fan will at once be apparent—it occupies but little space, it may, when not in use, be stuck in the high boot of the full-dressed Chinaman, or in the ample folds of his dress.

These fans are made to suit every class of society from mandarin to peasant—to suit the changing seasons, in different sizes in proportion to the quantity of breeze required. The Son of Heaven, during the sultry summer months, employs fans of feathers, and during winter of silk. Fashion, however, lays down inexorable laws as to the time and period of their use, and to be seen with a fan too early or too late in the year is considered as mauvais ton. A poem by Ow-Yang Hisu informs us that ‘In the tenth moon the people of the capital turn to their warm fans.’

During the warm weather the fan forms part of the ceremony of tea-drinking; the host takes his fan as soon as tea is drunk, and, bowing to the company, says, ‘Thsing-chen’ (I invite you to fan yourselves); each guest immediately using his fan with great gravity and modesty. It is considered a breach of etiquette to be without a fan on such an occasion, or to refrain from its use.[44]

The Chinese have exhausted every species of ingenuity in the construction of fans of an outré character. The ‘broken fan,’ a curious trick, is to all intents and purposes a simple folding-fan, and opened from left to right presents no feature uncommon. On being opened to the reverse, the whole fan appears to fall to pieces, each bone, with the part attached, being separated from the other as though the connecting strings were broken: the principle is extremely simple, but the effect is surprising.

A fan which has been styled the ‘impracticable,’ is of circular form, the radiants of ivory, tortoise-shell, sandalwood, or metal filigree, perforated to such a degree as to render it useless as a means of disturbing the air. These are elaborately carved with figures, scroll-work, and other designs, or with birds, flowers, etc., in silver gilt filigree.

The ‘double-entente’ fan, opened in the ordinary manner, exhibits some harmless motif such as a flower, bird, or landscape; opened the reverse way, it discloses a ribald sketch that would entail severe penalties on its maker if discovered. The Peking variety shows two such pictures which are not seen when the fan is opened, but are disclosed by turning back the two end ribs of the fan.

The ‘dagger-fan’ is an invention of the Japanese, its importation into China being strictly forbidden. In its outward appearance it is sufficiently harmless, being apparently an ordinary lacquered folding-fan: in reality it is a sheath containing a deadly blade, short and sharp, resembling a small Malay kris (see illustration facing page 60). These dagger or stiletto fans are by no means confined to the East; in the British Museum is a print of an Italian stiletto concealed in a case made in imitation of a fan; the panaches of ivory, engraved with Italian arabesques.

Inscription fans are common, and exhibit an endless variety of devices. Some are literary tours de force, the most famous being that associated with the Emperor Chien Wên, of the Liang dynasty, A.D. 550, and said to be the composition of the monarch himself. This consists of a couplet of eight characters written in the eight corners of an octagon fan. On beginning at any one of the eight characters and reading round the way of the sun, it forms a couplet of perfect sense and rhythm.

A story is told of a favourite of the Emperor Ch’êng Ti of the Han dynasty, B.C. 32, whose name was Pan, and who for some time had been a confidante of his Majesty and the Queen of the Imperial Seraglio. Having persuaded herself that something more than an ordinary attachment of the hour existed between herself and the ‘Son of Heaven,’ finding her influence on the wane and being unable to conceal any longer her mortification, grief, and despair, she forwarded to the Emperor a circular screen-fan, upon which were inscribed the following lines expressing the contrast between the summer of her reciprocated love and the autumn of her desertion:—

‘O fair white silk, fresh from the weaver’s loom,

Clear as the frost, bright as the winter snow—

See, friendship fashions out of thee a fan:

Round as the round moon shines in heaven above;

At home, abroad, a close companion thou;

Stirring at every move the grateful gale,

And yet I fear, ah me! that autumn chills

Cooling the dying summer’s torrid rage,

Will see thee laid neglected on the shelf,

All thought of bygone days, bygone like them.’[45]

From this period, in China, a deserted wife has been called an autumn fan.

FANS OF THE FAR EAST—Continued

JAPAN

THE fan is regarded by the Japanese as an emblem of life, that widens and expands as the sticks radiate from the rivet or starting-point, and for this reason is selected for the new-year’s gift.[46] It enters into almost every affair of the life of the people, from Emperor to peasant; friends greet each other with a wave of the fan; it is one of the gifts which the bride takes with her to her husband’s house; it is presented to the youth on the attainment of his majority;[47] it is used by jugglers in feats of skill, by the umpires of wrestling matches as signal, by singers to modulate their voices; the condemned man marches to the scaffold fan in hand; the executioner does not relinquish his fan during the performance of his duty.

The early history of the fan in the country of Dai Nippon is substantially the same as in all the countries of the far and nearer East, and presents us with the same order of development, the earliest being formed of the primitive palm leaf, or of feathers. We have, in the story of ‘The Tengus’ a description of the Dai or Master Tengu, who wears a long grey beard down to his girdle, moustaches to his chin, and carries in his left hand as a sign of his rank a fan made of seven wide feathers pointed at the

FEATHER-FAN
(From a Japanese painting. British Museum.) tip: this he waves while singing a song, doubtless for the purpose of modulating his voice. The fan is identical in form with that of Chung-li Ch’uan, one of the eight Taoist immortals, referred to on page 47.

The rigid screens received from China at the close of the sixth century are referred to in the earlier part of this chapter, under China. Those in use in Japan present no material difference to the Chinese except in the details of their decorative significance. The larger screens were employed both in

HAND-SCREEN, BAMBOO HANDLE
(From a Japanese painting. British Museum.) civil and religious ceremonial, as war standards, and waved by servants in attendance upon royal and distinguished personages. These latter denoted the rank of the owner, the material being of silk or other fabric stretched over a wooden framework, painted or otherwise decorated, the forms extremely varied, but more usually those of the circle, oval, or pear. The pear-shaped hand-screen is seen in the hands of Hotei, the fat god of prosperity, and of Juro, the god of longevity, as an invariable accompaniment of those divinities. An example is given from a portrait of Lü T’ung-pin, a Taorist Rishi of the eighth century, by Go-gaku, nineteenth century, British Museum, 640. This has a red tassel or tail at the end of the fan, a kind of combination of fan and fly-whip. A similar fan appears in a painting of the Caligraphic school, British Museum, 1617. This fan is of Chinese origin, and is constantly represented in the art of that country.

Fly-whips were also used. Of the representations of the sixteen Arhats (Buddhist divinities) given in the ‘Butsu zō dzu-i,’ three hold fly-whips (futsujin) in their hands. This instrument is also seen in the right hand of Vimalakîrrti, an Indian priest, in the painting on silk attributed to Shingetsu, Sesshiu school, fifteenth century, British Museum collection.

The fly-whip or chasse-mouche was also used by generals while on horseback, this being made of strips of tough paper suspended from a lacquered handle mounted with bronze.

A list of the more important varieties of Japanese fans, together with the dates of their introduction, as given by native authorities, will probably be of service.

Rigid fans or hand-screens, introduced from China, end of sixth century A.D.

Folding-fans (bamboo), invented by the Japanese, 668-671 A.D.

Gumbai Uchiwa, flat iron battle-fans, eleventh century.

Gun Sen, folding iron battle-fans, twelfth century.

Hi ogi, court-fans, eleventh century.

Mai ogi, dancing-fans, beginning of seventeenth century.

Rikiu ogi, tea-fans,fanbegin“ning ofseven“teenthcen“

Water-fans for kitchen use, eighteenth century.

The invention of the folding-fan has already been referred to. Its earliest form is the Kōmori (bat), so named from the supposition of the wing of this animal suggesting the principle of its construction. It is formed of fifteen bamboo sticks having a slight re-divergence springing from the handle end, so that when held closed in the hand as it is by courtiers while fulfilling the office of fan-bearing, it still appears open. It is stated that this spread-out form was adopted as court-fan on account of the misuse of the dagger-fan. The mount is of paper, which may be painted with any design in any colour except the unlucky green and light purple.

One of the many traditions of its invention may be given. It is attributed to a fan-maker of the Tenji period, 668-672, whose name is forgotten, living at Tamba near Kyoto. He was married to a shrew, and on a certain night a bat having found its way into the sleeping-room, the woman reviled her husband for not getting up to throw the vampire out. The animal coming in contact with the lamp, scorched its wings and fell to the floor. As the man picked it up, the opening of the creature’s wings suggested to him the principle of a folding-fan that might be carried in one’s sleeve.[48]

The Suye hiro ogi (wide end) has a similar divergence to the foregoing, with the addition of a slight curve or rounding of the outward sticks. It was used for the dances in the Nō drama; the number of sticks varying from fifteen to twenty-five. This also dates from the seventh century. The example illustrated is decorated with a series of crests of various families on a gold ground. In a drawing by Bun-chin, nineteenth century, British Museum, 891, of Performers in the ‘Nō’ Theatre, is represented a beautiful fan of a peacock with outspread tail and branches of bamboo, in gold, blue, and green. This fan is of the ordinary shape.

The Akomé ogi is the earlier court-fan, and dates from the invention of the folding-fan in the seventh century. It consists of thirty-eight blades of wood painted white, decorated with cherry, pine, plum, or chrysanthemum, on a ground of gold and silver powder, ‘among the mist.’ The fan is ornamented at the corners with an arrangement of artificial flowers in silk, with twelve long streamers of different coloured silks; the rivet is formed of either a bird or butterfly. This type of fan was in use by the court ladies until 1868.

By the courtesy of Mr. W. Crewdson we are enabled to reproduce one of these rare fans, bearing the following inscription:—

‘The decorations at the end of this Akomé-ogi show that it was used by a court lady. At Kioto, the Mikado’s Palace had Lemon trees at the right-hand side of the entrance and Cherry trees at the left; hence these ornaments composed of Cherry flowers and Pine knots.’

The description which Pierre Loti has given us of these fans is so charming that we cannot refrain from quoting it.

‘They wave with constant motion, or carry shut, their court-fans, on the pleated silk (?) of which are delicately painted dreamy fancies, of inexpressible charm, picturing the reflection in the water of cloud forms, of moons wintry pale, the flight of birds, or showers of peach blossom wafted by the wind in April mists. At each angle of the mount is tied an enormous tassel with shades of chenille, the ends of which trail along the ground, brushing the fine sand at each movement of the fan.’

The Hi-ogi court-fans are made of the Hi wood (Chamæcyparis obtusa), this being a soft light velvety wood of a beautiful golden brown, having the additional advantage of immunity from the attacks of wood-eating insects. The brins are twenty-five in number, fastened with a metal rivet, and threaded through with silk strings having very long ends, looped at the top corner of the outer ribs to form a rosette or other floral device. These fans were first introduced with the simple ornament of the owner’s crest; afterwards they were painted with great elaboration and delicacy.

At court ceremonial the Emperor and nobles often bear the Hi-ogi instead of the Shaku, which is a short staff or sceptre made of wood (yew) or ivory, generally held vertical in the right hand against the lower part of the chest, to give the body a more dignified bearing; when the fan is borne, it is generally carried closed, and held in the same manner as the Shaku.[49]

Before the age of fifteen a fan of common wood is carried, painted

on the outside, and ornamented with silk threads or strings in five colours; on his sixteenth birthday the Japanese youth attains his majority and receives a present of a fan.

The code regulating all the details of court ceremonial is absolute, and always observed; the use of ivory for the Shaku is confined to the highest ranks, or the most important ceremonial; no noble could use an ivory Shaku on any occasion. The various usages connected with the fan are subjected to similar restrictions.

Ladies carried in place of the Shaku the Hi-ogi.

A fan of special make and design is used by the Empress, and its use is forbidden to any subject. The blades are twenty-three in number, connected with a white silk ribbon. The decoration is confined to the chrysanthemum, pine, orange blossom, plum, or Camellia Japonica. The ribbon rosettes or loops, affixed to the top of the outer blades, are arranged in keeping with the particular flower which is represented on the fan; these have seven long streamers, four feet long, of different colours. The rivet also is of a particular kind—paper string.[50]

Chūkei are fans borne by priests and nobles; these have a redivergence at the ends, and date from the period of the introduction of the folding-fan; they are often painted with the most consummate skill, reflecting the best traditions of Japanese art. Many of these paintings exist; in most cases the leaves have been removed from the sticks and mounted as pictures.

Fabulous stories are extant recounting the marvellous accomplishment of the painters of the earlier epochs; amongst these is an account of Tadahira, who is said to have painted upon a fan a cuckoo which uttered its characteristic note whenever the fan was opened, and of Tsunenori, who drew a lion so life-like that other beasts fled from it.

The leading schools of Japanese painting are the Buddhist, Yamato-Tosa. Chinese, Sesshiu Kano, Matahei (popular), Korin, Shijō (naturalistic), and Ukiyo; each of these has well-marked characteristics preserved even to the present day.

The art of Japan was to a great extent founded upon, and is in certain directions a development of, that of the older civilisation of China. The earliest artist, therefore, recorded in Japanese annals, is a Chinese, Nanriu by name, of royal descent, who came to Japan about the end of the fifth century; but of this master, and of his immediate successors, there are no known examples.

It was in the succeeding century, upon the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, that we find the first establishment of a school of Japanese art, initiated by the Chinese and Coreans, and dedicated to the mural decoration of Buddhistic temples.

From the sixth to the ninth centuries, the history of Japanese painting is more or less clouded in doubt, and the first great artist who emerges from the general obscurity is Kanaoka (ninth century), although the few examples extant which are attributed to this painter are doubted by the best experts.

The Yamato-Tosa school, though the direct outcome of the study of Chinese methods, was essentially Japanese and naturalistic in character, and was founded by Kasuga Motomitsu in the latter part of the tenth century.

In the thirteenth century Tsunetaka, son of Kasuga Mitsunaga, assumed the name of Tosa and gave to the Yamato school the name it has since retained.

An important movement set in at the beginning of the fifteenth century, no less than a Chinese renaissance. For centuries Chinese influence had been waning, and the national style of Yamato and Tosa had held the field.

Sesshiu, the remarkable painter who founded the school bearing his name, was of the noble family of Ota, and was born in 1440. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was intended for the Church and placed under the instruction of the abbot of the temple of Hōfukuji. Sesshiu’s sympathies, however, were all in the direction of the fine arts, he neglected religious training, and a story is told of him—one of those extraordinary legends familiar in Chinese and Japanese annals—that upon one occasion, when bound to a pillar as punishment for some misconduct, he beguiled the weary hours of waiting by drawing rats upon the floor, using his toes for pencil and his tears for ink (!), the representation being so life-like as to alarm his janitor. Some versions of the story affirm that, upon the approach of the priest, the rats scampered away.

At the age of forty he visited China, the fountain-head, but was surprised to find that he had more to teach than to learn.

The fan of Hotei and the children, probably by Kanō Shō-yei, 1591, may be accepted as one of the finest examples of a painted fan of the Kanō school, the last of the three branches of the fifteenth-century revival of Chinese teaching. The school was founded by Masanobu, a painter of landscape, born c. 1423 and died 1520, its actual head, however, being Motonobu, his son, born 1476.

Hotei (Master Linen-sack), the god of prosperity, was a Chinese priest of the tenth century, famous for his fatness and his love of children. He could sleep in the snow, never washed himself, and had the power of infallibly predicting future events. The legends attached to his name are very similar to those narrated of many Taoist Rishis, but his claim to a position as Divinity appears to be due to the view enunciated in the Butsu-Zō dzu-i and other works, that he was an incarnation of Miroku Bosatsu Mâitrêya, the Messiah of the Buddhists, in which capacity his image has long been worshipped in Chinese temples. He is usually represented with a fan of the pear-shaped gourd type, and carries a cloth bag as a trap for little boys and girls, who are enticed inside to see the wonderful things it is supposed to contain, and then imprisoned until they can beg their way out. These ‘Precious Things’ include the Lucky Rain Coat, the Sacred Key, the Inexhaustible Purse, etc.[51]

Innumerable pictures of Hotei by Japanese artists are in existence, some dating from the fifteenth century.

The charmingly poetic view of the Tamagawa River, with the tea-plant in blossom, and flying cuckoo (Hoto-Togisu), is probably by Kanō San Raku, 1633. Both these fans are accompanied by a Japanese certificate of authenticity.

Autograph, motto, and inscription fans are referred to in another part of this work.[52] The practice of inscribing sacred texts upon fans, obtained during the latter part of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century, the period ‘when the Buddhist religion was openly professed by the wealthy and warmly supported by the luxurious.’ Fragments of Buddhist sûtras written on fans and fan leaves exist at the temples at Yamato, Ôsaka, the Imperial Museum Tôkyô, and elsewhere. These are copied from the ‘Lotus of the True Law,’ or other Mahâyâna texts of a like nature. The fans, though differing somewhat in size, are all alike in paper, pigments, and style of painting, and evidently had a common origin; they are overlaid with gold-leaf and dusted with fine sand; upon this a thin wash of red or black pigment is applied. The sacred text is written in ink, over a painting, usually a figure-subject and bearing no reference to the text; the faces sketched in a curious convention known as Hikimé Kagihana (eye with a line, the nose with a key), in which the eye is represented by a straight line and the nose with a somewhat acute angle. This convention has been traced to Kasuga Takayoshi (beginning of the twelfth century), who painted a number of picture rolls illustrating the tales of the Genii.

Japanese War Fans, Gumbai Uchiwa.
M^r L.C.R.Messel. M^r. W Harding Smith. M^r W.L.Behrens.

A fan leaf owned by the Temple of Saikyôji, Sakamoto, Omi, is illustrated in Selected Relics of Japanese Art, S. Tajima. A hi-ogi, with figures and pine-tree, in the Shinto Temple, Itsukushima-Jinsha Aki, is illustrated in the same work: this latter, doubtless, is a production of the Taira era, possibly a dedication to the temple from a scion of the Taira family, and painted by a daughter of Taira Kiyomori, the premier, 1167-1180, the writer of the ‘Lotus of the True Law.’

A similar combination of painting and writing obtained later, and was practised by Kôyetsu Hon-Ami, the predecessor of Kôrin Ogata, the reputed founder of the Korin school. This artist was a skilful writer of Chinese ideographs, in which art he was one of the ‘Three Pens’ of his time, being the founder of the Kôyetsu school of caligraphy.[53]

A fine example of Kôyetsu in the possession of Baron Ryûichi Kuki is reproduced in Mr. Tajima’s work. This is painted on a gold ground, and represents a rabbit in a flowered field. The fan is divided in two parts, the writing, which is by the artist, being on the gilt portion. Kôyetsu died at Kyoto in 1637, aged eighty-two.

The Ukiyoyé school included most of the makers of colour prints; two of the more famous of them, Masanobu Kiato, and Hokusai Katsushika, born in the same year, 1760, also painted fans. The former opened a shop at Ginza for the sale of smokers’ implements and medicine, and sold besides folding-fans and long panels upon which poems were written; both of these he ornamented with sketches; they became renowned far and wide, and from their sale he derived large profit.

A fan leaf by Hokusai, a masterly sketch of the head and shoulders of a ‘Beauty,’ is illustrated in Tajima’s work, as also several fans painted with courtesans, by an almost equally celebrated maker of colour prints, Kunisada.

Battle- or war-fans are of two kinds—the flat, rigid screen (uchiwa) which is the earliest, and the folding (ogi). In both, iron is the material of which it is mainly composed. The first named is sometimes formed completely of metal (iron and brass), is of considerable weight, and is used by officers both for direction, offence and defence, i.e. as baton, weapon, and shield.

This sometimes assumes a circular form, and is occasionally inlaid with the more precious metals; more often, however, it resembles the pear- or gourd-shaped screen. In the centre example illustrated, belonging to Mr. W. Harding Smith, the handle is of lacquered wood, the ornaments at its extremities, together with the rim of the fan blade, of bronze gilt; it bears an inscription on the obverse in Japanese, and on the reverse in Chinese, as follows:—

Japanese script.

‘Kisei ai shozaru jun-kwan

no hashi naki-ga gotoshi.’

‘Wrong and right (or odd and even) happen for ever,

impartially, like the revolving ball.’

This may, possibly, be rendered by the following:—

‘Defeat and victory succeed each other

by a turn of Fortune’s wheel.’

Chinese script.

‘Sono toki-koto kazé no gotoku

Sono shizuka-nuru koto hayashi no gotoshi.’

‘Its sharpness is as the wind, its softness

as the grave.’

The fan in the possession of Mr. W. L. Behrens is ornamented with two dragons in low relief, the motto ‘Tenka tai hei’ (international peace).

In the folding battle-fan, the stick is of wrought iron, the branches varying from ten to fourteen in number; in many military fans, the stick is of bamboo, painted black, the guards of iron, often arrow-shaped, and richly inlaid with silver.[54]

The decoration of the mount, of thick paper, consists of the sun, moon, or north star, usually in red, but also in gold, on a black or coloured ground. An unusual example, illustrated, has a gold sun on the one side, and a silver crescent moon and nine golden planets on the reverse; the ground being light, the guards of yellow bronze, ‘seutoku.’

The fine fan in the possession of Mr. L. C. R. Messel has on the obverse a golden sun with two flying birds, and on the reverse a silver sun with similar birds.

The sun motif is occasionally abandoned in favour of a figure-subject. M. Ph. Burty exhibited at Liverpool in 1877 a fan that belonged to a commander-in-chief; the leaf, of stout buff paper covered with silk tissue, is painted in india ink with the Seven Sages in the Forest of Bamboru. The brins are of plain whalebone, the panaches of oxidised iron, elaborately inlaid with scroll-work and crests in silver, the latter being of the powerful family of Nai-To. Another fan from the same collection belonged also to an officer of high rank. The brins are of bronze gilt, the panaches of polished iron, shaped like slips of bamboo, and chased with lions and flowers. On the inside of one panache is an inscription in inlaid gold, stating that the ironwork was made by U. Da-Kane-Signe; the leaf of glistening paper.

The most characteristic war-fans are, however, those having the simple red sun, with no superfluous decoration, the initial purpose of these instruments being that of a signal. They constantly appear in representations of battle-scenes, the general on his war-horse in the heat of battle brandishing in his right hand the fan, the symbol of his authority and command. In Hokusai’s painting of ‘Tamétomo and the Demons’ (British Museum, No. 1747), the hero is grasping a huge bow in his right hand, and waving the folding battle-fan in his left.

In a print by Kuniyoshi (c. 1820) of the battle of Kawanakajima between Uyesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen (fifteenth century), a sword-cut is parried by the war-fan.

In a representation of the same battle by Yoshitora, a dismounted general is directing with a war-fan an attack by spearmen.

In the colour print by Hiroshige II. of Yoshitsune and Benkei, the war-fan also appears.

In the print by Shunsui of Atsumori and Kumagai, the hero, mounted, is plunging into the sea followed closely by his adversary Kumagai, also mounted, brandishing the war-fan as a signal and challenge.[55] Two of the many stories or legends relating to the war-fan may be given.—The first refers to Nasu no Yoichi, an archer, whose clan took the fan as their crest,[56] in allusion to his performance at the battle of Yashima in 1185. ‘When the Taira were driven from Kyoto by the Minamoto in 1182, the Empress Ni no Ama flew with the child-emperor Antoku, to the shrine of Itsukumisha, where thirty pink fans, bearing the design of the sun disc (Hi no Maru) were kept. The head-priest gave one to Antoku, saying that it contained in the red disc the Kami of the dead Emperor Takakura (1169-1180), and would cause arrows to recoil upon the enemy. The fan was accordingly attached to a mast of the Taira ship, on which a court lady is always depicted, and a challenge sent to Minamoto no Yoshitsuné, which was accepted by one of his archers, Nasu no Yoichi, who on horseback rode in the waves, and with a well-directed arrow broke the rivet which held the leaves together, and thus shattered the fan.’

The second tells of Araki, a Samurai whom Oda Nobunaga wished to kill, summoning him to audience, placing himself in such a position that the neck of the Samurai came in line with the sliding panels separating the audience chamber from the daimio’s room, intending to have the shoji slammed together as the man knelt, and thus decapitate him. Araki, suspecting the trap, promptly laid his iron fan in the groove, jamming the shutters, and thus saving himself.[57]

The Ha uchiwa (jin sen) is a camp-fan originally introduced from China in the seventh century and made of the feathers of the eagle, pheasant, or peacock, the handle usually lacquered red, black, or blue; the interesting example illustrated is formed of eagles’ feathers fixed in a horn handle.

Dancing-fans (Mai ogi) were introduced at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The brins are ten in number, the mount of thick paper, usually bearing a family crest. One of the earliest of these fans is to be seen in the painting of a dancer by Matabei (born 1578), in the Morrison collection (reproduced in Painting in the Far East, Laurence Binyon), the decoration of the mount consisting of a few scattered leaves.

The fan is the most usual accompaniment of the dance, and is generally seen in the hands of the Kagura dancers or of the performers with the Shishi mask. The fan dance, which is more nearly allied to jugglery than to the dance, is said to commemorate the performance of Uzume while alluring the Sun Goddess Amaterasu from the cavern, whither she once retired, plunging the world into temporary darkness by her absence. In this, the fan represents the leaves of the pine-tree, the performer balancing a number on his forehead, nose, mouth, hands and feet.

Tea-fans (Rikiu ogi) are for use at the tea ceremonies celebrated in honour of tea in every province on the first day of the first month, and commemorating the curing of the Emperor Murakami, 947-967 A.D., of a disease against which the physicians were powerless. The Emperor recovered after drinking an offering of tea made to the Goddess Kwanyin. The code, that formerly was of a gorgeous description, was modified later by Sen-no Rikiu, from whom the fan set apart as cake tray or saucer derives its name. The Rikiu fan is of the simplest possible construction, having only three sticks, the decoration also being of a simple character. It is used for handing round little cakes, and for no other purpose, fanning being strictly tabooed during such a dignified proceeding.[58]

The giant closing fans (Mita ogi) were used in the processions at Ise in honour of the Sun Goddess, the traditional originator of the Japanese dynasty. These were six or seven feet long, five men being appointed to carry one of this huge magnitude.

Water-fans (Mizu uchiwa), for kitchen use, date from the eighteenth century. These are of bamboo split into segments, covered with stout paper, and varnished or lightly lacquered so as to allow of the fan being dipped in water, thus securing extra coolness by evaporation. They are often decorated with figures and other subjects, the varnish subsequently applied being of a rich warm brown.

Roll-up fans (Maki uchiwa) are circular, the paper stiffened with thin strips of bamboo; the handle is of bamboo cut through with a slit to allow the circular fan, which is set on a pivot, to have free play. When open, the strips of the bamboo foundation are horizontal, thus securing rigidity; when not in use, the position of the strips may be reversed, and the disc rolled round the stick and tied.

Of modern fans, those of ivory and tortoise-shell, carved or decorated with lacquer and inlay, are, for the most part, made for exportation, and are often of extreme beauty. The excellent example in the Victoria and Albert Museum is decorated with circular medallions in gold lacquer of various shades, portions being carved in relief. It is finely inlaid in places with mother of pearl; signed by Taishin (a pupil of Zesshin), and dated 1884. An example, equally fine, is given from the collection of Mr. M. Tomkinson. This is decorated with a view of Fuji san, or Fuji-no-yama (peerless mountain); those born within its watch are considered most happy and fortunate beings.

‘Great Fujiyama, tow’ring to the sky!

A treasure art thou giv’n to mortal man,

A god-protector watching o’er Japan—

On thee for ever let me feast mine eye.’[59]

Of the cheaper hand-screens exported in large quantities to Europe, the simplest form is that of a dried palm leaf cut to the required shape, and bound round the edge, the stem forming the handle. The most common variety is made by splitting bamboo into thin strips that are spread out radially, fastened with thin cord, and covered with paper; these are decorated with designs displaying high qualities of arrangement and graphic skill, and are printed in that process of chromoxylography which, if not actually invented by the Japanese, has been carried by them to its highest point of excellence. A more elaborate hand-screen is also exported, the covering of silk, painted.

It will be readily understood, that the fan, entering as it does so closely into the daily life of the Japanese, should also form the subject of many games. Two characteristic instances may be cited. The ‘fan and cup’ game was particularly favoured by court nobles and ladies. A company met by the river, each member launching on the water a fan prepared with varnish or lacquer to ensure buoyancy and to prevent absorption of moisture. The game consisted in the composition of a verse or couplet of poetry during the time the fans were at the mercy of wind and wave, and before they regained terra-firma. Tea-cups were also used, this last being illustrated in a Chinese makimono by Hwei-chi Ku-Yuen, British Museum, 276.

In the ogi otoshi or fan target game, a target called ‘cho,’ made somewhat in the form of a butterfly, is placed on a low table or pedestal on the floor. A fan is thrown from a given distance with a sudden and peculiar turn of the wrist, causing it to reverse itself in its passage through the air and strike the target with the rivet end. This game is played by two people facing the target at opposite ends. Bells are attached to the outer edge of the ‘cho,’ that sound when a successful hit has been accomplished.[60]

No notice, however brief, of the fans of Japan would be complete without some reference to the constant employment of the fan form as a decorative motif in Japanese design, one of the many evidences of the important place the fan holds in the affections of the people. Lacquered tea-trays assume the shape of the fan; inkstands take the form of a closed fan, the ink-well at the rivet end, the body of the fan forming a case for pens;[61] while in diapered patterns, borders, and other decoration, both flat and in relief, the fan motif is constantly made use of. The interesting series of fan-shaped panels illustrative of Japanese history, by an unknown artist of the Yamato Tosa school, seventeenth century, British Museum, 305-324, are excellent instances of the use of the fan form in flat decoration, these being probably removed from an old screen. Three kakémonos in the collection of Mr. R. Phené Spiers are each finely painted with four full-sized fans, decorated with various lilies, drawn with that consummate skill and knowledge of plant form which would appear to be the peculiar heritage of the sons of Dai Nippon.

CHAPTER IV

FANS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES

IN any survey of the industrial arts of the more primitive nations or peoples, three facts must be taken into consideration: 1st, climatic conditions; 2nd, the natural products indigenous to the country, and the outcome of its climatic conditions; 3rd, the degree of the intellectual development of its inhabitants.

The study of any particular branch of art presupposes some acquaintance with the history of the people among whom the art was practised. In considering, however, the art of primitive peoples, this matter of history and association plays but a minor part. Pictorial storiation is practically non-existent, individualism is lost in the collective racial influence. Moreover, the raw material of industry is precisely the kind readiest to hand, and generally demanding the minimum of skill in its working.

The fans of primitive or more or less uncivilised peoples may therefore be divided into three or four distinct types: 1st, the natural palm-leaf fans, common in most palm-producing countries; 2nd, the plaited rush-, grass-, or cane-fans, these being generally of the spatula, or half-halberd shape; 3rd, hide-fans, which usually take the form of round or oval screens; 4th, feather-fans, the character being necessarily determined by the kind of feathers employed.

It will readily be perceived that the earliest and simplest forms are those supplied ready to hand by Nature herself, viz. palm-leaf fans. These may be divided into two great classes. In the one, the leaf is set symmetrically on the stem; in the other, it is fixed laterally; in both instances the natural stem forms the handle. An excellent example of the first named is the large fan made from the leaf of the Pritchardia pacifica, used only by the great chiefs of the Fiji Islands. In this the leaf is cut to the shape of a reversed heart, bound round the border by a wisp, the ends of the fronds being arranged in tufts at intervals round the edge of the fan, forming an agreeable contrast to the simple radiating lines of the leaf.

In the second class of palm-fan, one side of the leaf is either cut away or bent laterally, the large leaves of the Palmyra or Talipot palms being used, cut short, the edges worked round with an applied border of thin strips of the leaf. This form appears to be ubiquitous; it is common, not only to primitive peoples, but also to the more civilised countries of the East. In India it appears both in the form of the smaller hand-fans and the larger pankhás, often richly decorated in colour, with inserted plaques of mica, or other ornamental device.

The art of plaiting with rush, straw, grass, cane, roots, and other flexible materials is one of the very earliest practised by man; we find it in constant use amongst savage tribes, who employ the process for mats, baskets, various coverings for the person, and other articles of personal and domestic use; both the technical skill and the æsthetic effect being often of a very high order. It will at once be perceived that this process is especially suited to the fan, which demands, above all things, lightness of construction; the plaited fan is therefore the most usual form in that vast group of islands known as Polynesia, as well as in most other countries situated within the equatorial belt.

The principle of plaiting is to commence from the stick or handle, which generally extends two-thirds of the distance along the blade or leaf of the fan. The stick is generally of wood, occasionally of ivory, and in some instances both substances are employed, the handle often elaborately carved.

The most usual shape is that of a spear cut crosswise and shortened: the ordinary principle of form-development is followed, from extreme attenuation lengthwise, to extreme width and shortness, the form of the lower border varying from an acute angle to a semicircle, the top varying from straight line to arched or curved.

The plaiting is of varying degrees of fineness according to the character of the leaf, straw, cane, or fibre employed. The patterning also varies, occasionally straw of a different colour (black or brown) being introduced.

This type of fan is found in the Marquesas Islands (South Pacific), the Hervey (Cook) Islands, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands. A large plaited broad rush-fan appears in the Horniman Museum, made and presented by Queen Kapiolani of the Hawaiian Islands (illustrated p. 272); a similarly formed fan appears in the same collection from Tahiti.

In some examples from Samoa in the British Museum collection, the shapes are slightly more varied, remarkably so in one instance in which the top border assumes a pointed or zigzag pattern. The kite shape also is found in various forms. (Page 81, Nos. 1, 2, 3.)

HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

In the Hawaiian group a spatula shape appears, this also being developed to its utmost limit of breadth or width, the handles of plaited hair, in two colours, forming a pattern.

In British Guiana a curious fan (warri warri) is used, formed of strips of the Ita palm, having no stem, but simply a rolled edge, either single or double (crosswise), forming a finish to the leaf or blade, and affording a grip for the hand. The size of these fans varies from six to fifteen inches. A development of the above form is used as bellows by the natives of Ecuador and Peru; the double handle slightly longer, the forms varied to leaf and shield shape. In India, also, the two-handled bellows-fan is used, made of strips of the leaf-stalk of the Tucuma palm.

In the British Museum is a curious little fan having only a loop for handle, formed of plaited reed (Iturite) of two colours, brown and black. (Page 81, No. 8.)

In the hide-fans common on the western border of Africa, the form approaches that of a circular screen, set on a wooden handle. In these the ornamentation is either formed of the natural markings of the hide, or an ‘applique’ of leather, painted white, and cut to various perforated patterns, so as to show a bright vermilion feather stuff in the perforations; the three colours, the brown or black of the hide, the white leather, and the vermilion perforations forming a very effective contrast. Examples from Nigeria appear in the British Museum collection. A smaller fan of goatskin is in the Horniman Museum. These hide-fans form part of the fantastic death-dance costumes of Old Calabar.

1, 2, 3, 11, 12. SAMOA. 4, 5. BRITISH GUIANA.
6, 7, 8. ECUADOR AND PERU. 9, 10. SOUTH-EASTERN PACIFIC.

Feathers, although constantly employed as ornaments to the person, are less commonly used for fans than might generally be supposed, especially in countries where bird life is abundant.

Amongst the Blackfoot nation of North American Indians, eagles’ feathers were used as a standard of valour at the advent of the white man, and the capture of eagles was regarded as a sacred ceremony. In the British Museum is a fan of these eagles’ feathers, with a handle covered with coarse linen of a printed pattern; to the tip of each feather is affixed a small pink fluffy feather, thus forming a pink border to the top of the fan, the border being repeated at the top of the handle. This was procured from ‘Little Ears,’ a Blood Indian. A similar fan, minus the handle, appears in the same collection; in this instance the tips of the feathers are ornamented with little tails made of hair, varied at the lower ends by white fur. In consequence of a dream that appeared to a Blood chief named Bears’ Lodge, a dance was instituted in which these fans were waved, and whistles made of eagles’ bones were carried and used. (Illustrated opposite.)

Ceremonial fans were employed by the Indians of the Great West; we have an account of the visit of a Taensas chief on the banks of the Lower Mississippi to Le Sieur de La Salle in 1682: ‘The Chief condescended to visit La Salle at his camp; a favour which he would by no means have granted, had the visitors been Indians. A master of ceremonies and six attendants preceded him, to clear the path and prepare the place of meeting. When all was ready, he was seen advancing clothed in a white robe, and preceded by two men bearing white fans, while a third displayed a disc of burnished copper, doubtless to represent the Sun, his ancestor, or, as others will have it, his elder brother.’[62] It is safe to assume that these fans were of feathers, and the incident is an evidence that the use of the fan in high ceremonial was universal, and common to both East and West.

There still remains the cockade form of fan, found amongst the West African tribes; an example appearing in the British Museum collection, of paper, with primitive painted ornaments in black, red, and yellow, alternated with inscription; the fan measuring some twenty inches in diameter.

A most interesting example of hide appears in the Horniman Museum, taken from the king’s palace at Benin in 1897. This, doubtless, from its size and the cumbrous nature of its material, as well as the foregoing example, was waved by the attendants of some highly placed personage, probably the king.

The square or oblong flag-fan is made by the natives of the Niger settlements of West Africa. An example in the Victoria and Albert Museum is of plaited grass with strips of the natural shades of brown and yellow, and others stained red and black; the handle is covered with reddish-brown leather, fringed along the side of the leaf, the fan edged with the same material.

The appearance of similar decorative motifs in countries widely separate opens up an interesting field of speculation. Some explanation, however, of the fact of the cockade (though in itself, together with the flag form, a simple device) appearing among the West African tribes, may be found in the fact that the natives of the interior of West Africa were long exposed to the influence of the Mohammedan culture of the Western Sudan; the races were to some extent intermingled, and a close commercial relationship has been maintained during a long period.

Fly-whisks are obviously articles of necessity throughout the countries of the Torrid Zone.[63] These are formed either of feathers, of vegetable fibre, of the hair of the larger animals, of hempen string, or other materials.

These instruments occasionally acquire a sacred significance; Blondel affirms that they were common in Peru and Mexico before the Spanish conquest, and, together with the fan, were used also as a symbol of authority, the handles being adorned with the precious stone ‘theoatz-ehuaquetzalli.’

A species of fly-whisk, formed of dried grass, is used as a war fetish by the natives of the Gold Coast; in some instances an iron bell is attached, carried and rung by the magician in front of the warriors. Sticks and also fan handles bound with feathers are used as propitiatory offerings to the gods by the natives of the South-Eastern Pacific. (Page 81, Nos. 9, 10.)

In the Hawaiian Islands feather wands (Kahili) are carried as a symbol of rank; these appear to have been originally fly-whisks, and are formed of the tail feathers of various birds. Six examples are included in the British Museum collection, the handles formed of ivory alternated with horn, the extremity of the handle being formed of the bone of an enemy.

A long fly-whisk from Hawaii appears in the same collection, formed of the neck feathers of the cock, of varying colours, white, orange, and brown, with black tip; the handle of wood, bound round with black and buff cane.

The most primitive form of fly-whisk is that from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, made of grass fibre, bound to a stick, and resembling a rough besom.

Vegetable fibre of various kinds would appear, indeed, to be the material most commonly employed for these articles, being, doubtless, the readiest substance to hand. A remarkable series of fly-whisks from Tahiti, formed of fibre, were presented to the British Museum by Sir W. C. Trevelyan, Bart.; in these, the handles (of wood) are finely plaited halfway with fibre of two colours, the rest of the handle of a spiral form, the head carved to a fantastic shape.

An interesting fly-whisk from the Tonga Islands is formed of cocoa-nut fibre, finely plaited at its junction with the wooden handle; small turquoise, black, and white beads, are

affixed to the plaited portion, these forming an extremely effective contrast to the rich red brown of the fibre. In Samoa, enormous fly-whisks are formed of this material, sometimes affixed to a handle of wood, and occasionally bound round with the same material to form the handle. (Page 81, Nos. 11, 12.)

A curious fly-whisk from Tahiti is of twisted fibre, the handle being formed of two birds’ wing-bones bound together, with a portion of plaited fibre in two colours forming the extremity of the stem at its junction with the whisk.

The Matabeles employ fly-whisks of horse-hair, both white and black. An example of white horse-hair bound with brass, fixed in a handle of cane, and also one of black hair, with the handle formed of plaited brass wire, are to be seen in the British Museum.

A similar fly-whisk of black horse-hair is in the same collection; the handle of steel wire, bound round a double leather thong, the extremity forming a loop

ornamented by blue glass beads. These are used by the elders (Elmoru) of the East African Protectorate.

Black horse-hair forms the material of fly-whisks used by the natives of the Upper Nile. In the example illustrated the hair is set in an open-shaped piece of leather, with a long bone handle.

In Abyssinia, also, fly-whisks formed of the tails of the smaller animals are employed. An example occurs in the India Museum, the hair dyed red and yellow, the handle of silver parcel-gilt.

Probably the most curious of all fans and fan-like objects in use among primitive peoples is the so-called Ghost Fan of South Celebes (Malay Archipelago). This mysterious object consists of a triangular arrangement at the end of a stick, of fine spun red stuff embellished with a bordering of gold tinsel, together with spangles or hanging ornaments along its lower edge. Around the stick is tightly twisted a piece of paper, probably containing an incantation. An example occurs in the Ethnological Museum, Berlin, referred to and illustrated in Der Fächer, Georg Buss. (See p. 106.)

CHAPTER V

THE FLABELLUM AND EARLY FEATHER-FAN

ANGEL WAVING A FLABELLUM
(From the Book of Kells.) THE Christian Church was quick to perceive the utility of the fan as an instrument of religious ceremonial, imparting to this object a mysterious importance, a sacerdotal distinction, preserving and shielding it from common use; it has even been claimed that this appropriation was instituted by the Apostles themselves, Bishop Suarez attempting to substantiate this by an appeal to an apocryphal liturgy attributed to St. James.

The earliest recognised notice, however, of the flabellum as a liturgical ornament is in the Apostolical Constitutions, which direct that after the oblation, before and during the prayer of consecration, two deacons are to stand, one on either side of the altar, holding a fan made of thin membrane (parchment), or of peacocks’ feathers, or of fine linen, and quietly drive away the flies and other small insects, that they may not stick against the vessels; this use of the flabellum being derived, not from the ritual of the synagogue of the Jews, but from that of the Pagan temples. Butler (Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt) quotes a similar rubric from the liturgy of St. Clement. The same author refers also to flabella waved by the deacons in the Syrian Jacobite, and probably also in the Coptic, rite for the ordination of a priest at laying on of hands—they appeared at solemn festivals and at regular celebrations of mass.[64] On Good Friday, also, they were used at the consecrations of Chrism—seven deacons holding flabella, walking on either side of the holy oil when carried in procession.

Many evidences of its early adoption by the Latin Church are extant. Moschus (Prat. Spirituale, § 150) cites an occurrence showing its employment

SILVER PROCESSIONAL FLABELLUM
(From Butler.) in the time of Pope Agapetus, A.D. 535, in which a deacon, who had falsely accused his bishop, was removed from the altar when he was holding the fan in the presence of the Pope, because he hindered the descent of the Holy Spirit on the gifts. This same author (Prat. Spirituale, § 196), in narrating how some shepherd boys near Apamea were imitating the celebration of the Eucharist in childish sport, is careful to mention that two of the children stood on either side of the celebrant, vibrating their handkerchiefs like fans,[65] thus showing that the use of the flabellum was general even at this early period. In a letter of St. Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, c. 1098, accompanying the present of a flabellum made to a friend, its use and mystic import are explained—the flies, representing the temptations of the devil, are to be driven away by the Catholic faith.

Gradually the waving of the flabellum acquired a deeper symbolic meaning—it was held to signify the wafting of divine influence upon the ceremony, the movements to and fro symbolising the quivering of the wings of the Seraphim; hence we find representatives of the Seraphim playing an important part in its ornamentation. In the Book of Kells we have a representation of the four evangelists in which the Seraphic symbol of St. Matthew is figured by the crossed flabella, each having a pair of bells with triple hammers; the remaining three evangelists being represented by the usual symbols of the Lion in the centre, and the Bull and Eagle at the lower corners.

Germanus (Neale, Eastern Church, p. 396) goes even further, and holds that the vibration of the flabellum typifies the tremor and astonishment of the angels at our Lord’s Passion.

In a Byzantine fresco at Nekrési (Caucasus), of a date uncertain but somewhat late, an open sanctuary is represented with two angelic winged deacons waving seraphic flabella around the head of the second person of the Trinity.

COPTIC FLABELLUM.
(From Butler.) We have, then, in these flabella, two distinct types—the one composed of some yielding material such as vellum or peacocks’ feathers, the handles usually of ivory; the other rigid, and formed of metal, either silver or silver gilt, this latter being essentially a processional fan; both being used in ceremonial processions and celebrations of the mass.

Metal flabella also divide themselves into two classes—the large-handled processional fan, and the short hand-fan; an example of the latter is given from Butler, and consists of a circular disc of metal decorated with two rude figures of the Seraphim interspersed with Romanesque ornament.

Actual specimens of ancient flabella are almost non-existent, although a few have been preserved on the Continent; one of the most famous being that of the abbey church of Tournus, on the Saône, south of Chalon, at present in the Carrand collection, Museo Nazionale, Florence. This remarkable example, which may be taken as a characteristic type, is formed of a strip of vellum folded à la cocarde, painted on both sides with figures of St. Philibert and other saints divided by conventional trees. The outer borders consist of a continuous scroll of Romanesque ornament interspersed with figures of animals. Latin hexameters and pentameters are inscribed on the three concentric borders of the fan, as follows:—

✠ FLAMINIS HOC DONUM, REGNATOR SUMME POLORUM,

OBLATUM PURO PECTORE SUME LIBENS.

VIRGO PARENS XPI VOTO CELEBRARIS EODEM,

HIC COLERIS PARITER, TU FILIBERTE SACER.

✠ SUNT DUO QUAE MODICUM CONFERT ESTATE FLABELLUM;

INFESTAS ABIGIT MUSCAS ET MITIGAT AESTUS,

ET SINE DAT TEDIO GUSTARE MUNUS CIBORUM.

PROPTEREA CALIDUM QUI VULT TRANSIRE PER ANNUM,

ET TUTUS CUPIT AB ATRIS EXISTERE MUSCIS,

OMNI SE STUDEAT AESTATE MUNIRE FLABELLO.

✠ HOC DECUS EXIMIUM PULCHRO MODERAMINE GESTUM,

CONDECET IN SACRO SEMPER ADESSE LOCO;

NAMQUE SUO VOLUCRES INFESTAS FLAMINE PELLIT,

ET STRICTIM MOTUS LONGIUS IRE FACIT.

HOC QUOQUE FLABELLUM TRANQUILLAS EXCITAT AURAS,

ÆSTUS DUM SEVIT VENTUM FACIT ATQUE SERENUM,

FUGAT ET OBSCENAS IMPORTUNASQUE VOLUCRES.

The handle is formed of four cylinders of white bone, two being ornamented with semi-naturalistic vine foliage running spirally round the stem, the two lower fluted. These cylinders are united by nodes or pommels, tinted green; on the middle node the inscription MICHEL · M ·, on the upper ✠ IOHEL ME SCAE FECIT IN HONORE MARIAE. The stem is surmounted by a capital with four figures of saints, whose names appear on the node immediately beneath: S · MARIA · S · AGN · S · FILIB · S · PET. On the capital rests the guard or box which receives the flabellum when closed; the four sides are of elaborately carved white bone with green-tinted borders; the front and back panels, betraying evidence of a different hand, are now in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, and consist of arabesques of foliage with figures, birds, animals, etc., modelled with great spirit. The two lateral panels or faces form the richest portion of the fan, and are carved with six subjects from the Eclogues of Virgil. Three seated senators with other figures, two shepherds with oxen; three shepherds, two of whom are playing pipes, some sheep in the foreground; a seated shepherd blowing a horn; another shepherd with oxen and goats; a shepherd and satyr with dog and goats; and a seated shepherd with two oxen.

The modelling is somewhat rude and archaic, but extremely rich in decorative effect. One edge of the fan is fixed in the box, the other is attached to one of the lateral panels, which, in order to open the fan, is drawn over and attached to the reversed side by means of a cord.

Both sides are figured in colours in Du Sommerard’s work Les Arts du Moyen Age.

Of other flabella which exist, one is preserved in the Dominican Monastery of Prouille, in the diocese of Toulouse; another, with a handle of silver, was formerly at St. Victor, near Marseilles.

In the British Museum is a portion of an ivory handle of a flabellum, French, of the twelfth century, about twelve inches in length, finely carved with figures of the twelve Apostles and emblems of the Evangelists. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a similar fragment, but smaller, carved with compartments of animals, mythical beasts, monsters, etc.; these probably formed the two divisions of one single flabellum. These handles were sometimes square-shaped, as in the instance of the fragment in the Salting collection at present in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is also French, of the fourteenth century, and is carved on each of its sides with figures of saints in niches, with crocketed arches.

A portion of the cylindrical stem of a flabellum or aspergillum, probably French of the twelfth century, is in the British Museum. This represents the occupations of the twelve months of the year in three bands, as follows: January, a two-headed Janus looking in opposite directions; February, a figure seated before a fire; March, cutting trees with a hatchet; April, gathering blossoms; May, an equestrian figure with hawk; June, a mower with sickle and hooked stick; July, a mower with scythe; August, a reaper with sickle; September, thrashing wheat; October, sowing corn; November, killing a pig; December, pouring wine into a cask.

The figures are separated from each other by trees, and the three bands by rings ornamented with foliage and zigzag patterns with semi-rosettes, and at top and bottom are rings with half-defaced inscriptions.

There is also in the same collection a capital of morse ivory for the handle of a flabellum, North German, twelfth century.

These instruments figure repeatedly in inventories of church and abbey property. Butler quotes from one at St. Riquier, near Abbeville, in 831, ‘a silver fan for chasing flies from the sacrifice.’ At Amiens, in 1250, there existed a fan for a similar purpose, ‘flabellum factum de serico et auro ad repellendas muscas et immunda.’ In 1363 La Sainte Chapelle possessed ‘duo flabella vulgariter nuncupata muscalia, ornata perlis’; in 1376, ‘ij flabella, Gallice esmouchoirs, ornata de perlis.’

In the sacrist rolls of Ely, ‘Item, j flabello empt. ad Aurifabrum, 7d. Item, in pari flabellorum pro le Colpeyt empt. 6d.’

A Salisbury inventory mentions two fans of vellum or other material.[66] The Chapel of St. Faith in the crypt of old St. Paul’s possessed, in 1298, a muscatorium or fly-whip of peacocks’ feathers.[67] There is record of a gift to York Minster, between the years 1393 and 1413, of a silver-gilt handle for a flabellum.[68] In 1346, Hamo, Bishop of Rochester, presented to the cathedral ‘unum flabellum de serico cum virga eburnea.’[69] In the inventory of the Chapel of West Exeter, Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ‘i. muscifugium de pecock.’[70] In the enumeration of the valuable effects of the deceased Queen Isabella, daughter of Philippe le Bel, and consort of Edward II., the following entry appears: ‘De Capella, Duo flagella pro muscis fugandis.’[71]

In England the flabellum was in use even in remote parishes. In the churchwarden’s accounts at Walderswick, Suffolk, in 1493, is an entry of IVd. for ‘a bessume of pekoks fethers.’

Although the flabellum is very rarely represented in illuminated MSS., in the Book of Kells we find miniatures of angels waving these instruments; in the Gospel of Trèves (eighth century) is a conjoined evangelistic, symbolic figure holding a small flabellum in one hand and a eucharistic lance in the other. In a Hiberno-Saxon MS. of the eighth century a figure of St. Matthew is seen holding in his hand a flabellum. In the public library at Rouen are two representations of the use of this instrument; in the one, a thirteenth-century missal, formerly belonging to the abbey of Jumièges, the fan is held by the deacon in front of the altar at which the priest

FROM A GREEK PSALTER.
(British Museum.) officiates; in the other, it is waved over the head of the priest as he elevates the wafer: this in a pontifical of the church of Rheims, thirteenth century.

A psalter in Greek, British Museum, additional MSS. 19,352, gives a miniature of an angel waving a large flabellum over the head of David who is asleep; another instance occurs in a thirteenth-century Service-Book in the Barberini Library, given by Paciandi.[72]

Representations in printed books are still more rare. In Barclay’s Ship of Fools of the World, 1509, we find, however, a woodcut illustration of a spectacled bibliophile wearing cap and bells, seated among his books, holding in his hand a flabellum of feathers, saying:

‘Attamen in magno per me servantur honore:

Pulueris et cariem, plumatis tergo flabellis.’[73]

the word flabellis being here applied to the ordinary hand-brush or duster.

By the end of the sixteenth century the flabellum had fallen into complete disuse, its original purpose having been

FROM GOAR long abandoned or forgotten, although as late as 1688 Randle Holmes, Academy of Armory, refers to ‘the flap or fann to drive away flies from the chalice.’ Its sole reminiscence in the west is in the large flabella of peacocks’ feathers carried at solemn festivals in procession before the Pope. In the Greek Church, the fan is still delivered to the deacon at ordination as the symbol of his sacred office.

From the period of the final break up of the Roman Empire to that of the Crusades the general use of the fan was discontinued in Europe, and was probably only adopted by highly placed personages; during these early periods, however, it was still the religious fly-flap or flabellum, d’émouchoir, and Blondel infers from the circumstance, of Étienne Boileau not referring to it in his Livre des Mestiers (1200), that even at this time it no longer served any domestic purpose except in very rare instances.

The earliest English reference to the fan appears to be the following:—

‘In the thirtieth year of King Edward I., precept was given to Nicholas

Pycot, Chamberlain, of the Guildhall of London that he should cause to be sold all pledges for any debt whatsoever then in his custody.

‘In an inventory of pledges sold for arrears on the King’s Tallage, 31 Edward I., 1303. One fan (value not stated) taken from Henry Gyleberd of the ward of Basseshawe for 2s. 8d., which he owes of arrears of the fifteenth.’[74]

The oldest existing Christian fan, and the most famous of the few fans of which we have any record during the Middle Ages, is that which has become identified with Theodolinda, Queen of the Lombards, the saintly princess, who possessed a nail of the holy cross which was ultimately used as a setting to the Iron Crown of the kings of Lombardy. This fan is preserved as a sacred relic in the Cathedral of Monza near Milan. Superstition has invested it with magical powers. Pilgrimages are made to Monza by village maidens, often from a long distance, on a certain day of the year, as the act of touching it is believed to facilitate and promote their marriage projects. It is of the cockade shape, formed of vellum, of the beautiful purple hue we find in contemporary manuscripts; it is decorated with an alternating diaper of Romanesque ornament in gold and silver, and round its outer border on either side is the following inscription in Latin hexameters, which is given by Mr. W. Burges, Archæological Journal, vol. xiv., on the one side:

✠ ‘Ut sis conspectu praeclara et cara venusta,

Hac rogo defendens solem requiesce sub umbra,

Has soror obtutu depictas arte figuras

Praelegeris flavido ut decoreris casta colore.’

and on the reverse, now much obliterated:

‘Pulchrior ut facie dulcis videaris amica

... fervores solis ...

Me retinere manu Ulfeda (?) poscente memento

... splendoris ...’

Mr. Burges has pointed out that the form of the letters of the inscription, which are Roman with slight Rustic variations, as also the purple dye, are sufficiently similar to contemporary manuscripts of St. Augustine of the end of the sixth century.

THE MONZA FLABELLUM. Details.

The case which accompanies the fan is constructed on the same principle as the handle of the Tournus flabellum, although less elongated. It is of wood, covered with silver, the wooden part probably modern, made to the original shape, with the old silver used again. The length of the case with handle is 15-1/2 inches, the diameter of the leaf 10 inches.

The side flap was originally fastened to the fan, and drawn round until it formed a complete circle, as in the instance of the Tournus flabellum.

With respect to the identity of the original owner of this fan, although the claim which has been made for its association with Queen Theodolinda cannot be substantiated, its identification with any well-defined personage is equally difficult. Who was Ulfeda? Mr. Burges states with reference to this name that it is by no means the most legible part of the inscription—that he has been able to discover no one so named who lived during this period.

M. de Linas points out that the name Ulféda is a variant of the Saxon Elpheid, which the marvellous cloisonné fibula, exhumed, as is said, from a Carlovingian sepulchre at Wittislingen (Bavaria), gives under the softened form of Ufeila.

This Monza fan is not mentioned in an inventory of the treasury in 1275; in that of 1353 the following, however, occurs:

‘Item, fabella, seu orata una argenti facta ad modum unius maze cum manica ligni ligata in argento.’

M. de Linas infers from the fact of the extremity of the handles being provided with a ring, that it was not a liturgic fan, and certainly this circumstance, together with the smallness of its size, would appear to be a sufficient evidence of its secular use; in any event, and whatever its original use, this fan, together with that of Tournus, must be accounted among the most precious relics preserved to us from that dim and dark, but extremely fascinating period.

The rigid flag-fan, which appears to have been in intermittent use in Europe from the early centuries of our era, consists of an oblong parallelogram with a handle fitted to one of its longer sides. These were made either of plaited straw of various colours, of linen painted and embroidered, of parchment or vellum, or of silk, woven or embroidered, often with lozenge-shaped diapering.

The earliest examples remaining to us are Coptic or Saracenic. M. Robert Forrer in his Reallexikon figures two which were obtained from the cemetery of Akhmîn, the Greek Panopolis, presumably belonging to the fourth-sixth century. Of these, one is finely plaited of brown, red, and black straw, with a representation of four hearts encircling a cross, the other of a reticulated diapered pattern with a border of linen. A similar flag-fan of plaited straw appears in the Berlin Museum: this example, also, is probably Coptic.

M. Charles de Linas, quoting from the life of St. Fulgentius, sixth century, affirms that the Bishop of Ruspa, whilst he was a monk and even

an abbot, occupied his leisure hours in copying Holy Writ or in plaiting ‘fly-flaps’ of palm leaves. This same author[75] figures a flag-fan from an engraved glass vase, exhumed from the catacombs, and now preserved in the library of the Vatican, representing the Virgin Mother seated with the infant Saviour on her lap, a deacon behind agitating a rectangular flabellum fixed in a lateral handle. The zigzag ornamentation indicates that this, also, was formed of plaited straw.

In the Observances of the Augustinian Priory at Barnwell, Cambridge, ‘The Fraterer ought to provide mats and rushes to strew the Frater and the alleys of the Cloister at the Frater door, and frequently to renew them; in summer to throw flowers, mint, and fennel into the air to make a sweet odour, and to provide fans.’ ‘Muscatoria in estate providere.’[76]

The most remarkable example, however, of this banner form is on a diptich of ivory offered by Charles the Bald to the abbey of Saint-Corneille de Compiègne, and at present in the Cabinet de Médailles at Paris. On the inferior compartment of the diptich is a eunuch (?) holding

FROM AN IVORY DIPTICH.
(Cabinet de Médailles, Paris.) with both hands a flabellum apparently of metal, the handle long, thick at the end, and engraved with lines representing masonry; the top in the form of a turret, from which hangs a cord. The leaf, in all probability embroidered, has a plain broad border enclosing a laurel wreath.

The banner form of fan became fashionable with the Venetian women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These were of two kinds: the one, of a more ornate character, was used by matrons; the other, abanico di novia, of a delicate whiteness, used only by engaged maidens or the newly married. An example of the latter occurs in the portrait of the painter’s daughter Lavinia, by Titian, in the Dresden Gallery, probably painted in 1555. Titian painted this favourite daughter some eighteen years later; in this portrait she carries a feather-fan, the sign of Venetian nobility, Titian having been, in the interval, created a Count Palatine by the Emperor Charles V.

Authentic examples of these flag-fans are exceedingly rare. A richly embroidered Venetian fan of the sixteenth century is in the collection of the Grand Duke Frederick of Baden; another, also Italian, has a large oval medallion with ornaments of silver and brown, and is in the collection of Mr. G. J. Rosenberg of Karlsruhe; a third, abanico di novia, of white vellum enriched with Venetian lace of the sixteenth century, is referred to by Blondel as being in the possession of Madame Achille Jubinal of Paris.

These fans were probably introduced into the western countries of Europe by the returning Crusaders. They never, apparently, obtained any great vogue except in Italy; they continued, however, in intermittent use until the close of the sixteenth century, when, together with feather, tuft, and cockade fans, they gradually gave place to the modern folding-fan which had by this time made its appearance in Portugal from the Far East.

From the fourteenth century onwards, the history of the fan becomes more clear, and Blondel quotes a number of French inventories in which the fan figures—that of the Comptesse Mahaut d’Artois (1316), an émouchoir with silver handle; of Queen Clémence (1328), an émouchoir of silk brocade; and also in the will or testament of Queen Johanne of Évreux (1372), a jewelled émouchoir costing five golden francs.[77]

The cockade form, à la cocarde, has been in use during all periods subsequent to its first introduction from the East in the early centuries of our era. We have already referred at some length to the cockade flabella at Tournus and Monza. In an inventory of Charles V. of France, 1380, we read of ‘un esmouchouer rond, qui se ploye, en yvoire, aux armes de France et de Navarre, à un manche d’ybenus.’[78]

During the fourteenth century, the long-handled flabellum was also in use, waved by attendants as at Thebes and Rome. In the inventory above quoted (Charles V.) occurs—‘Trois bannières, ou esmouchoers, de cuir ouvré, dont les deux ont les manches d’argent dorez.’ ‘Deux bannières de France, pour esmoucher le Roy quand il est à Table, semées de fleurs de lys brodées de perles.’[79]

The feather-fan, also, was in use during this reign, as we learn from a curious entry in a letter of the Queen—alluding to a criminal prosecution against some manufacturer of spurious coin—‘Le suppliant trouva d’aventure un esventour de plumes, duquel il esceuta le feu—où l’on faisoit la ditte fausse monnoye.’[80]

The feather and tuft fans in use from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries and later were formed of the plumes of the peacock, the ostrich, and the paroquet, dyed various colours: the number of the feathers varied from three to twenty or more, and were arranged so as to imbricate the plumes in the gradation of their natural growth. These were set in handles of carved ivory and the more precious metals, generally silver, and were often richly jewelled, and suspended from the girdle by a slender chain. Of their cost we have a hint in Marston’s satires:

‘How can she keepe a lazie serving-man

And buy a hoode and silver-handled fan

With fortie pound?’

Silver was probably the material of the handle of Mistress Bridget’s fan in the theft of which Falstaff and his Ancient were implicated.

Falstaff.And when Mistress Bridget

Lost the handle of her fan, I took’t upon

Mine honour thou hadst it not.

Pistol.Didst thou not share? hadst thou not fifteen pence?

References to the silver-handled fan occur commonly in old plays:

‘She hath a fan with a short silver handle,

About the length of a barber’s syringe.’

The Floire, 1610.

‘All your plate, Vasco, is the silver handle of

Your old prisoner’s fan.’

Love and Honour, Sir W. Davenant, 1649.

‘Another he

Her silver handled fan would gladly be.’

In Marston, Scourge of Villainie, lib. III. sat. 8.

The above references are to fans of the ordinary sort; the cost of the more precious fans of history was considerable. Brantôme (c. 1590) refers to the fan of Queen Eleanor with its mirror all ornamented with precious stones of great value, and also to the new-year’s gift of Queen Margaret to Queen Louise of Lorraine—a jewelled fan of mother of pearl of such beauty and richness that it was valued at more than fifteen hundred crowns,[81] a sum equal to a thousand pounds of our present money.

The employment of the fan as fire-screen is indicated by the new-year’s gift to Queen Mary of England in 1556, when she received ‘seven fannes to kepe the heate of the fyer, of strawe, the one of white silke.’

Queen Elizabeth’s partiality for fans is historic, and it is upon record that she regarded a fan as a suitable gift for a queen.

Leicester’s new-year’s gift in 1574 is recorded: ‘A fan of white feathers set in a handle of gold, garnished on one side with two very fair emeralds, and fully garnished with diamonds and rubies; the other side garnished with rubies and diamonds, and on each side a white bear [his cognisance] and two pearls hanging, a lion ramping with a white muzzled bear at his foot.’

Among the new-year’s gifts, 1588-9:—

‘By the Countess of Bath, a fanne of Swanne downe, with a maze of gilene Velvet, ymbrodered with seed pearles and a very small chayne of silver gilte, and in the middest a border on both sides of seed pearles, sparks of rubyes and emerods, and thereon a monster of gold, the head and breast mother of pearles.

‘By a Gentleman unknown, a fanne of sundry collored fethers, with a handle of aggets garnished with silver gilte.’

In 1589, ‘a fanne of ffethers, white and redd, the handle of golde, inameled with a halfe moone of mother of perles, within that a halfe moon garnished with sparks of dyamonds, and a fewe seede perles on th’ one side, having her majestie’s picture within it: and on the back-side a device with a crowe over it.’

‘Geven by Sir Frauncis Drake.’

In 1599:—

‘By Mrs. Wingfeilde, mother of the maydes, four ruffes of lawne and a fanne.’

From a letter of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sydney, December 13, 1595, we learn that ‘upon Thursday she dined at Kew, my lord keeper’s (Sir John Packering) house (who lately obtained of her majestie his sute for £100 a yeare land in fee farm). His intertainment for that meale was great and exceeding costly. At her first lighting, she had a fine fanne, with a handle garnished with diamonds.’

It is also recorded that upon her visit to Hawsted Hall, the seat of Sir Thomas Cullum, she dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat.[82]

In the year 1600, a commission was issued to the Lord High Treasurer, the Lord Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Treasurer of Her Highness’s Chamber, to examine and take a perfect survey of all ‘robes, garments, and jewels,’ as well within the Court as at the Tower and Whitehall. In this, no less than twenty-seven fans appear. The following are enumerated:—

Item, one fanne of white feathers, with a handle of golde, havinge two snakes wyndinge aboute it, garnished with a ball of diamondes in the ende, and a crowne on each side within a paire of winges garnished with diamondes, lackinge 6 diamondes.

Item, one fanne of feather of divers colours, the handle of golde, with a bare and a ragged staffe on both sides, and a lookinge glass on thone side.

Item, one handle of golde enamelled, set with small rubies and emerodes, lackinge 9 stones, with a shipp under saile on thone side.

Item, one handle of christall, garnished with sylver guilte, with a worde within the handle.

Item, one handle of elitropia (q), garnished with golde, set with sparks of diamondes, rubies, and sixe small pearls, lackinge one diamonde.

The feather-fan appears in the following portraits of Queen Elizabeth, painted and engraved:—

Jesus College: white feather-fan with jewelled handle.

The Newcome picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery: part of a feather-fan, the portrait being three-quarter length.

Welbeck: a small feather-fan hanging from girdle.

The engraving by Johann Rutlinger: a large feather-fan, the handle of elaborate design set with jewels. Also pictures at Cobham; Woburn Abbey; Charlecote Park; Christ Church, Oxford; Penshurst; Powerscourt, and other places.

The folding-fan was not introduced into this country until the latter part of the queen’s reign; in the following pictures it appears:—

Jesus College, half length, 1590.

The Ditchley portrait, whole length, 1592; fan attached to the girdle and held in right hand.

Bodleian Library, portrait attributed to F. Zucharo.

To enumerate the different portraits, painted and engraved, in which the feather-fan appears, would be an impossible task; sufficient has been said to indicate the various forms these articles assumed. Reference may, however, be made to the feather-fan appearing in Renold Elstracke’s engraving of Anne of Denmark (queen of James I.); this consisting of three large ostrich plumes set in a jewelled handle. To the same engraver’s portrait of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James, a similar feather-fan. Also on a monumental brass, illustrated in Lipscomb’s Buckinghamshire, vol. iii. 291, the wife of John Pen, Esquire, 1641, appears with an ostrich feather-fan hung from her girdle. In a portrait attributed to Sebastian del Piombo at Frankfurt is an extremely ornate feather-fan with a silver handle.

We also obtain an excellent idea of the form these feather-fans assumed in Italy in the fifteenth century from the engraved design for a hand-screen by Agostino Carracci (illustrated facing p. 204). This consists of an admirably designed cartouche enclosing a subject of a satyr and nymphs bathing; above is a bust of Diana enclosed in a second cartouche, at the top of which is a head and wings of a Cupid; the whole is surmounted by a tuft of ostrich feathers. On the same plate are three other medallions, Neptune and Minerva, a head of Mars, and the Graces, these latter either intended as alternative subjects or for introduction at the back of the fan. The engraving is signed ‘Agust. Carazza Inv. e fe.’

The feather-fan was used by both sexes, as we learn from Bishop Hall, describing a fashionable gallant:

‘When a plum’d fan may shade thy chalked face,

And lawny strips thy naked bosom grace.’

An ostrich-plume folded fan is given in a miniature of Mademoiselle D’Hautefort in the cabinet of M. de la Mésangère. This consists of ten sticks each with a single feather attached, dyed alternatively yellow and blue.

Feather-fans continued in general use until the time of Vandyck and later, and are in evidence in several portraits by this master; indeed the use of the tuft- and feather-fan has never been completely abandoned, the article having remained in intermittent use even to the present day.

None of these ancient feather-fans exist in their complete form, from the perishable nature of the ostrich plume, which, in the lapse of time, crumbles to fragments, and from this circumstance the remarkable feather hand-screen in the possession of Mr. Messel is of the highest interest.

A few handles, however, are to be found in the various collections, both public and private. A pretty ivory handle of a sixteenth-century Italian feather-fan is in the Salting collection, at present at South Kensington. This is delicately carved with two half-length female figures issuing from acanthus-leaved ornament, and holding a festoon of drapery, a mask of Cupid above. Near the handle end are two winged terminal monsters.

The head of an ivory-fan handle, also Italian of the same period, is in the South Kensington collection: this has a female terminal (head restored) and two dolphins forming the top, two masks on either side, with other terminals and cornucopiæ.

GHOST FAN. Malay Archipelago
(Ethnological Museum, Berlin.)

CHAPTER VI

PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (ITALIAN AND SPANISH)

FAN OF FERRARA, OR ‘DUCK’S-FOOT’ THE establishment of the Portuguese as a conquering power in the far East dates from the first expedition of Vasco da Gama in 1497. Five years earlier, Christopher Columbus had sailed westward over the Atlantic, bearing a letter from his royal mistress to the great Khán of Tartary, seeking India and far Cathay, and finding instead—America.

The three expeditions of Vasco da Gama, during the first twenty years of the sixteenth century, together with the operations of Alfonso d’Albuquerque, resulted in the complete supremacy of Portugal as a trading power with the East. From Japan and the Spice Islands to the Red Sea and the Cape of Good Hope, they were the sole masters and dispensers of the treasures of the East,[83] and during the whole of the sixteenth century enjoyed a complete monopoly of the Oriental trade. As early as 1502, the King of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting him ‘Lord of the Navigation, Conquests, and Trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,’ but it was not until 1516 that the Portuguese made their appearance in China, where, ‘at Ningpo, they succeeded in establishing a colony, carrying on a gainful trade with other parts of China, as well as with Japan.’[84] It was thus that the folding-fan found its way first to Portugal through its traders.

This introduction of the folding-fan into Europe marks the beginning of a new era of the fan’s history, as, although both Chinese and Japanese fans possess qualities which are absolutely individual and unique, yet it must be confessed that the fan, in the hands of European artists, its early Oriental influence notwithstanding, ultimately developed a character and style quite its own, and reflecting the artistic conditions of its epoch and surroundings.

There are, however, considerable grounds for supposing that some form of the folding-fan, as we now know it, existed in Europe at a period considerably anterior to the Portuguese expedition to the East. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné du Mobilier Français, makes a remarkable statement in connection with some thin metal fragments which were unearthed during some excavation at the Château de Pierre. These fragments, says this distinguished author, which are very characteristic of a fan constructed like those of our own times, should be anterior to the siege of 1422, as they were found in the carbonised débris belonging to that epoch. They are composed of an alloyed metal, cuivre et argent. The piece B represents one of the outside flats, and was fixed to a guard of wood or very thin metal, to which was glued the stuff, or vellum; the piece A one of the branch pieces or brins. M. Viollet-le-Duc infers from the fact of the pieces not being pierced at the handle end, but finished with a cross, that the branches were tied with a silken cord, which would also be attached to the waist belt; he points out the great antiquity of the flabellum (doubtless meaning the cockade form), and concludes by saying, ‘It is difficult to allow that the fan, which is merely a derivation of it (qui n’en est qu’un dérivé), was not in use until the sixteenth century, as several writers have contended.’

M. Viollet-le-Duc’s meaning as to the probable construction of this fan is not so clearly stated as might possibly be desired. We take it that these pieces were but the ornaments of a folding-fan formed of ivory, wood, or other material on the modern principle—that the large piece B formed the shoulder, to be completed by another piece forming the guard proper. However this may be, and whether these pieces really formed part of a folding-fan

A B or not, this author, in the concluding portion of his note, has expressed a truth which it is not possible to gainsay, viz. that the principle of the folding-fan already existed, in the form of the cockade, and that it is only necessary to divide the cockade in two parts, and to protect the ends with some firm substance, to arrive at the folded fan as we now know it. Indeed this was done—fans were carried towards the close of the sixteenth century which consisted of a segment of a cockade, inserted in a long handle similar to that of the plumed fan, thus uniting the characteristics of both plumed and folded fan. Vecellio, Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo, 1590, figures these small fans, of which two illustrations are given. We are thus presented with a decorative development which is gradual, reasonable, and complete, a development quite conceivably

SMALL RIGID FANS. (From Vecellio.)independent of any importation from the East, and of itself bridging over the gap that otherwise would have existed between two apparently opposing types.

Any speculations as to how this fan of M. Viollet-le-Duc came to exist would therefore be idle; the type was no new one. We have already referred to the pleated fan crest, seen on the heads of horses in Phœnician and Persian monuments.[85] A similar fan crest appears on the horse’s head in the

Brétigny seal of Edward III., engraved in consequence of the Treaty of Brétigny, 1360, by which this monarch renounced the title of King of France. This appeared again in the seal with the altered legend in which he resumed the title—the period of its use, 1372-77. This same seal with fan crest was used successively by Richard II., Henry IV. (first seal), and Henry VI. (silver seal), the legend only altered.

A still more remarkable example is the large displayed fan crest (the earliest authenticated instance of a regular crest),[86] in the centre of which is a lion passant, on the top of the flat helmet of Cœur de Lion (second seal, 1197-99), used after his return from captivity, and quite possibly, therefore, borrowed from the East.

The fan-plume or panache appears also on the flat-topped helmet of Alexander III., King of Scots (second seal); the horse also bearing the fan-plume.

These fan crests are also seen on the seal of Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel; of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, 1301; and of Edward of Carnarvon, Prince of Wales, 1305; and on the effigy of

FEATHER-FAN.
(Milan.) Sir Geoffrey de Luttrel, c. 1340, showing a fan upon which the entire Luttrel arms are depicted. A large fan crest, having little tufts of feathers at each division of the fold, appears on the arms of the family of Schaler, Basle; another is to be found on the common seal of the City of London (dated 1539), charged with the cross of the city arms. ‘In course of time this fan, in the case of London, as in so many instances, has through ignorance been converted or developed into a wing, but the “rays” of the fan in this instance are preserved in the “rays” of the dragon’s wing (charged with a cross) which the crest is now supposed to be.’[87]

With respect to the origin of these fan crests, we must go back, says Mr. Fox-Davies, to the bed-rock of the peacock popinjay vanity ingrained in human nature; the same impulse which nowadays leads to the decoration of the helmets of the Life Guards with horse-hair plumes and regimental badges, the cocked-hats of field-marshals and other officers with wavy plumes.... The matter was just a combination of decoration and vanity.

Notwithstanding the foregoing instances, it is abundantly clear that the folding-fan, though it may have been in intermittent use during these early periods, obtained no great vogue in Europe until the sixteenth century, when it was in general use in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and that the prevalence of the fashion was resultant upon the influx of Eastern manufactures.

The feather-fan, referred to in the last chapter, although regarded as the sign of nobility, was occasionally carried by the wives of the rich merchants of Venice. A noble Venetian matron carries a tuft fan with a mirror in the centre garnished with pearls; the plumed fan is seen in the hands of the noble demoiselles of Milan, of married Genoese ladies, of the noble matrons of Siena, the latter of whom, together with the ladies of Venice, Perugia, and other cities, also carried the flag-fan.

The smaller fan, with long thin handle, surmounted with five or seven feathers set symmetrically, is carried by the Parmese, Ferrarese, and Florentine ladies, and by the noble matrons of Genoa.

The Milanese ladies carried a fan made apparently of feathers, rigid, and bound round in five sections. The married ladies of Naples and Bologna carried rigid screens designed in the form of a cartouche of the strap-work so usual in sixteenth-century Renaissance ornament. The later hand-screens, seen in the engravings of Callot and others, were obviously a development of this form.

The above instances are cited from the engraved work of A. de Bruÿn,[88] in which also appears a long-handled fan of seven feathers carried by a Turkish lady.

In an earlier work by the same engraver, Imperii ac Sacerdotii ornatus, 1579, a bishop holds in his left hand the feather fan, in his right a crozier.

In the art library, Victoria and Albert Museum, are several designs for feather-fans and handles, by an unknown artist, but certainly Italian, drawn vigorously with a pen and washed with bistre. In the same collection is a design in pencil for the panache of a folding-fan, in the Italian manner, displaying great knowledge of Renaissance design.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century, and indeed earlier, small screens were the fashion, painted either with love scenes, inscribed with suitable verses, or views of Italian towns, with a short description, and were sold for a sum equivalent to an English groat.

The English traveller, Thomas Coryat, in his Crudities (1608), writes: ‘These fans both men and women of the country [Italy] do carry to cool themselves withal in the time of heat, by the often fanning of their faces. Most of them are very elegant and pretty things, for whereas the fan consisteth of a painted piece of paper and a little wooden handle, the paper, which is fastened at the top, is on both sides most curiously adorned with excellent pictures.’ These, probably, are the fans referred to above as seen in Vecellio and the work of other engravers. Many were apparently rigid, and probably formed of ivory or similar hard substance; the size would be about six inches. They were by no means confined to Italy, but became the vogue in Spain, France, and other countries.

A long fan, carried by a noble Neapolitan lady, is given by Hefner-Altenek, in his work on costume. This is apparently rigid, since no sign of pleating is apparent in the representation, which is, however, small.

The colour is blue with decorations of gold, the figure taken from a picture in an album in the possession of this author, 1596-1611.

Doubtless one of the earliest forms of the folded fan in Italy was the so-called ‘duck’s foot,’ used by the ladies of Ferrara; the leaf, which opened to a quarter of a circle, was formed of alternate strips of vellum and mica, with delicately painted ornaments. The stick was of ivory and consisted of eight narrow blades. Blondel would seem to infer that this type of fan originated in France, and cites a contemporary portrait of ‘un personnage du Bal sous Henri III.’ A fan, evidently the ‘duck’s foot,’ with a pattern agreeing with the system of mica or other insertion, appears in an engraved portrait of Louise de Lorraine, queen of Henri III.

This form of fan is, however, probably Italian in its origin; it is figured by Vecellio, in the hands of a lady of Ferrara; it is also seen in the earlier engraved work of de Bruÿn, above referred to.

Legendary accounts of the woes of the unfortunate Torquato Tasso, who had dared to ‘lift his love’ to a princess of the house of Este, have afforded many themes for the imagination of subsequent writers from Byron and Goethe downwards. The story of the fan of Eleonora d’Este, which was of the form above described, surmounted with rubies, is a pretty one, and may be given for what it is worth.

On a day when reading to the princess his Gerusalemme, in which the episode of Olindo and Sofronia in the second canto was intended as portraying Tasso’s own situation with regard to her, his enraptured listener, won by the charm of the moment, was on the point of yielding, when, by a supreme effort, she recalled herself to her sense of duty, hesitated for a moment, grasped her fan, kissed it, flung it at the poet’s feet—and fled.

This association of vellum and mica appears to have been pretty general for the leaves of the folding-fans upon their first introduction in the middle of the sixteenth century. There were two different systems: in the one, the decoration consisted of painting on the plain surface of the mica or vellum, or both, as in the fan of Ferrara, or the Actæon fan, described on page 146; and in the other, the leaf is cut to such a degree of elaboration as almost to rival the finest lace, as in the charming fan in the Musée de Cluny, illustrated.

The system of mica insertion was developed until fans were made entirely of this material, with painted arabesque decoration similar in character to that of the Actæon fan at Cluny, illustrated page 146. An extremely interesting example is illustrated from the collection of Mr. L. C. R. Messel. In this, the stick is of plain ivory, perforated on the panaches, the blades numbering thirteen. The leaf is divided into three rows of twenty-five panels each, decorated with a medley of arabesques of children, animals, birds, and flowers, the panels separated by narrow borders in blue and black.

Of découpé fans, no finer example could be given than that from the Musée de Cluny, the stick of which is composed of ten blades of bone, the two outer ones extending the whole length of the leaf, the rest to a little less than half-way across. The leaf, which occupies exactly three-fourths of the whole length, is of paper cut to an extremely refined geometrical pattern of circles and lozenges, with small, and even minute pieces of mica inserted at intervals, imparting a richness and variety to the fan without destroying its lightness and elegance.

This type of fan appears constantly in the portraits, both painted and engraved, of the latter half of the sixteenth century. It reached England, apparently, about 1590, or a little earlier, and is seen in the portraits of Queen Elizabeth painted about this date.

This art of elaborate perforation (découpé) is essentially Italian in its origin, and was evidently practised to a considerable extent during the period we have been considering. In the fan which has become associated with Mademoiselle Desroches, the utmost degree of elaboration is attained, and this example may be accepted as a type of a number of fans produced during the seventeenth century and later.

It was at a gathering of wits at Poitiers in 1579 that Étienne Pasquier, perceiving a flea on the neck of Mlle. Desroches, exclaimed that ‘la petite bestiole’ deserved to be immortalised. A collection of poems in Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian, was published in Paris in 1582, under the title of La Pulce de Mademoiselle Desroches, the most felicitous of these plaisanteries being, according to La Monnaye, from the pen of the lady herself.

The fan leaf, said to commemorate this event, once in the possession of the fair Pompadour, and now in the Jubinal collection at Paris, is of paper, elaborately cut to imitate lace. This leaf—the stick has long since perished—was exhibited at the great exhibition of fans at South Kensington in 1870. It bears five finely painted miniatures representing the senses; in the centre picture (touch) a young man places his finger on the bosom of a sleeping lady, the spot on the neck presumably representing ‘la petite bestiole.’[89]

The charming fan in the possession of Mr. L. C. R. Messel was obtained in Florence. The vellum leaf is finely perforated throughout; the large centre cartouche and series of small oblong panels are painted with exquisite minuteness and care. The character of the decoration is that of the later years of the seventeenth century, the stick of a subsequent date.

The great spirit of the Renaissance had well-nigh exhausted itself by the time the folded fan had become the vogue in Europe. Michael Angelo, the last of the Titans, died in 1564, and had lived long enough to witness the gradual extinction of the school he in great part created. Pierino del Vaga and Sebastian del Piombo had died seventeen years earlier.

The eclectic principle, developed to its highest attainable point by Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, was carried on by a crowd of men working on similar lines, but possessing far less knowledge and power, and what was vital truth in the work of the master was reduced to mere affectation in the hands of the follower.

During the closing years of the century, Italian art, it is true, received some sort of impetus as a result of the labours of the Carracci, but the revival was short-lived, and it remained to Guido, Guercino, Albani, Maratta, to continue the declension during the seventeenth, to be followed by Tiepolo and Canaletto in the eighteenth centuries.

It would serve no good purpose to quarrel with the painted folding-fan on account of its inability to rise to the high ideals of the quattro and cinque-cento. It belonged to a less spacious age, and if it descended to banality, it was because the times had become banal: it was entirely in tune with its surroundings.

It will be convenient, at this juncture, to describe in detail the various elements composing this fan-type which has easily distanced all others in the affections of the fair—a triumph so absolute and complete, that to ninety-nine women out of every hundred the idea of a fan is an instrument which may be folded.

The folding-fan, then, is made up of two principal parts—the stick (la monture) B B and the leaf or mount (la feuille) A. The former consists of a number of blades (brins) C C C C, which have varied at different periods, and are folded between two guards (panaches) D. The guard is made up of three dimensions: the handle-end (la tête) I, through which passes the pin (rivure) E—this is often jewelled; the shoulder (gorge) II, reaching to the lower edge of the mount; and the guard proper III.

The stick of the richer painted fans is composed of either ivory, mother of pearl, tortoise-shell, or bone: often carved with great minuteness, elaboration, and skill, and further enriched by gilding and inlay, painted miniatures, enamels, and precious stones; that of the less elaborate fan is of wood of various kinds—ebony, rosewood, bamboo, etc. It is also carved, gilt, inlaid, or lacquered in different ways.

The character of Italian sticks is that of simplicity and reticence, even to plainness, this being more in keeping with the generally grave character of the mounts. In a number of instances the brins present a perfectly flat, plain surface of ivory, relieved only by a little carving on the panaches. This is ornamented in various ways, the most characteristic method being that of gold and silver piqué. The work is done by means of a drill, the metal pressed into the spaces.

One of these Italian fans of the end of the seventeenth century, with plain white stick, is in the Wyatt collection, the skin mount painted with the Storming of Jerusalem, and the miraculous curing of Godfrey de Bouillon’s wound, the guards piqué with silver.

The beautiful Italian fan, with sea-nymphs upon a sandy shore, once belonging to the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette, and now in the possession of Mr. Burdett-Coutts, is an example of the best quality of piqué work. The stick is of horn of a light transparent golden hue. The panaches bear the crown and fleur-de-lys of France, and appear to be of somewhat later date than the brins and feuille, which may be put about 1760. The fan was acquired in Paris during the troublous times of the Revolution by the father of the late Rev. J. E. Edwards of Trentham, and exhibited by the last named at South Kensington in 1870. Upon the death of Mr. Edwards in 1885 it was purchased by the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

Another method of ornamentation is that of delicate piercing, the surface of the stick remaining flat and without carving. These pierced ivory sticks are occasionally alternated with those of another material, as light golden tortoise-shell, horn, and, in an instance in the Wyatt collection, with a mount of classical landscape and Pompeian ornament, pierced cedar.

The Italians, as also the Greeks, discovered early the resources offered to the artist by the material of ivory. Ariosto in his sixth elegy makes a charming reference to it in addressing his mistress:

‘As when ivory or marble wrought by the hand of the artist becomes unchangeable, so my heart, more inflexible than these, though it may fear the hand of the assassin, is incapable of receiving the image of any new love to remove thine which is engraven upon it.’

The richest sticks are either those in which the piercing is associated with carved panels or cartouches of figures, ornament, etc., with the ribbed backgrounds familiar to us in Chinese workmanship, or those of which the whole surface is treated in the most delicate relief, exhibiting the most consummate skill of handling. This is occasionally further enriched by gilding, silvering, and painting; in some instances, these several processes are associated, with the addition of mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell inlay.

Mother-of-pearl is treated in precisely the same way as ivory, i.e. flat-pierced; pierced and carved; pierced, carved, and engraved; with, in some instances, the addition of painting, and occasionally tinsel and silvering or gilding.

The various kinds of mother-of-pearl used in the manufacture of fans are as follows:—The Burgan or Burgandine pearl obtained from Japan; the white pearl, ‘poulette,’ from Madagascar; a black mother-of-pearl from the East. The shells being relatively small, it becomes necessary to piece them together by a system of splicing. This is done so skilfully that none but a practised eye is able to detect it. For the process of inlay and incrustation, the splendid Eastern pearl called ‘gold fish’ is used. This, upon its introduction, caused a complete revolution in the ‘éventail de luxe’; the magnificent rainbow tints of this pearl are said to be further enhanced by a process invented by M. Meyer.

Tortoise-shell follows the same principle of decorative development, and when piqué is employed, it is usually gold, as being more in harmony with the colour of the shell.

The ‘éventail brisé’ dates from the period of the first introduction of the folded fan into Europe. This is so named because it has no mount, but is entirely made up of a number of blades, which may be of any material—ivory, mother-of-pearl, the various woods, etc., and are painted, carved, or otherwise decorated, fastened at the head by means of a pin or rivet, and further connected with a ribbon running through each blade, at or near the circumference of the fan.

The earliest are those which were imported in such large quantities from the East, from the latter part of the sixteenth century onwards. The Western modification of these is seen in that class of fans produced in Italy and elsewhere during the latter part of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, which consisted of a system of flat, pierced scroll-work, of a somewhat severe and reticent character. This was supplemented by panels en cartouche painted and gilt, with portions of the ornament enriched with gold and colour; these usually opened out to rather less than a third of a circle. Miss Moss of Fleet possesses an interesting example with a painted ‘pastorale’ of three figures in the centre of the fan, together with lesser subjects en cartouche, the floral portion of the scroll ornament being emphasised with colour.

In the Wyatt collection is an interesting example of about 1730, in which the ornament forms a large cartouche in the centre, enclosing a subject of two Cupids holding a wreath over a heart with a canopy above. The cartouche is gilt and the figures painted; the lower portion of the fan is painted and gilt with flowers in the Chinese taste. The guards are carved, painted, and gilt; the connecting ribbon of green silk ornamented with a pattern in gold.

This system was practised later, with the addition of carving in low relief, the ornament having developed a rococo character.

Horn is treated in the same process of flat piercing: this was extensively practised during the whole of the eighteenth century, and many ‘minuet’ fans were made. A beautiful Italian example of these ‘minuet’ fans is in the Wyatt collection, decorated with silver spangles, with a white silk connecting ribbon.

Double or reversible fans open both ways—either from left to right or the reverse. These were in vogue during the latter years of the eighteenth century, and were made of various materials, but usually ivory, with painted ornaments. The most interesting were, however, those of sandalwood, with three printed medallions on either side of the fan, giving twelve subjects. The device, although surprising at first sight, is really simple, and consists of printing each blade with portions of two different subjects in the centre, one set of halves being exposed, the other covered by the blade next following.

These fans were common to most of the Western countries of Europe, a large number being made in England with subjects after Angelica Kauffmann and others.

The materials employed for the mount are chicken skin (so called, but really kid subjected to a particular treatment), asses’ skin, vellum, parchment, silk of various kinds, satin, lace, and paper.

The leaf or mount is sometimes single, but more often double. Those of the richer fans are painted either in transparent colour or in gouache (body colour); the latter, however, must not be applied too thickly on account of its liability to crack.

When the leaf is ready for mounting, i.e. after the painting is finished, it is pleated in a mould consisting of two pieces of thick, strong paper or cardboard, specially prepared with a coating of an oily nature; the leaf being placed between, and the mould closed and pressed. The brins are then introduced between the folds, and fixed by means of glue. This mould was invented about 1760, and the manufacture of it has remained since that date in the French family of Petit.[90] ‘This operation of pleating,’ says M. Duvelleroy (Rapports du Jury International, Exposition Universelle, 1867, vol. iv.), ‘very simple at present, was formerly very complicated; it was necessary for the éventaillistes to exercise the most scrupulous exactitude; now the mould dispenses with this care.’

Nothing that woman uses in the great art of pleasing can, however, be considered simple; do you doubt this fact? asks Charles Blanc, speaking of the modern collective mercantile system, rather than that of the artist, who begins his work and carries it to completion with his own hands. ‘No less than fifteen or twenty persons are employed in the making of a fan, which passes through three series of operations—1st, the work of the stick, in which are employed the cutter, the carver, the polisher, the gilder, the inlayer, the riveter, and sometimes the jewel setter, who inserts the precious stones; 2nd, the leaf, which requires the designer, painter, or printer as the case may be; 3rd, the work altogether, employing the gluer, and in the case of spangled or embroidered fans, the embroiderer or sempstress, and the folder or pleater.’ Finally, as in fitting, the last finishing touches—the tassels, tufts, and marabouts are added by the deft hand of a woman, and to quote again Charles Blanc, ‘when this formidable weapon of coquetry is completed, it is enclosed in a case, like a well-tempered blade in its sheath.’[91]

The most distinctive Italian mounts are those in which the whole field is occupied by subjects, usually from classic mythology. These are either direct replicas or rearrangements of the works of the later Italian masters—Giulio Romano, the Carracci, Guido, Guercino, as well as those French artists who either worked in Italy, or whose works found their way to that country, as Poussin, who spent the greater part of his life in Rome, Le Brun, and others. In these the chief interest centres in the mount, which is usually deep, and generally of skin, but occasionally of paper. The painting is in pure water-colour and also in gouache. In many instances these leaves have never been mounted; in others, the mount has been removed from the stick, and framed as a picture. None can with any measure of certainty be traced to a master-hand, although a fan appeared at the exhibition held in Drapers’ Hall (1878), which is declared to be by Pietro da Cortona (Berrettini), 1596-1667, and said to have belonged to the Marquise de Pompadour.

One of the earliest of these fan-mounts is in the possession of Mr. J. G. Rosenberg of Karlsruhe; the subject Orpheus and Iphigenia, the date about 1670. In the Jubinal collection is a Rape of the Sabines, an original design by F. Romanelli, who was employed by Louis XIV. on the frescoes in the Bibliothèque Mazarine.

Bacchus and Ariadne was a favourite subject—Guido’s well-known composition in the Accademia di Luca, at Rome, being often pressed into the service. The large engraving of Jacobus Freij was issued in 1727, and it is probable that the majority of mounts decorated with this subject were produced after the publication of the engraving. The version illustrated is from the collection of Lady Northcliffe; a skin mount, with slight differences in the arrangement, was exhibited at South Kensington in 1870 by Captain J. E. Ottley; a third is in the cabinet of an American collector.

The famous composition by Annibale Carracci in the Farnese Palace also appears on a number of mounts; a portion of this picture forms the subject of the centre medallion of Lady Northcliffe’s fan (illustrated).

The still more popular ‘Aurora’ of Guido supplied the subject of many mounts, including one in the Schreiber collection, British Museum.

Fans painted with Raphael’s well-known composition of the ‘Marriage of Cupid and Psyche,’ in the Villa Farnesina at Rome, appear in many collections, the landscape being added; the example illustrated is a typical one; the stick, however, is modern.

The fan in the Wyatt collection with the subject of Venus and Adonis, by Leonardo Germo of Rome, is interesting from the fact that it is an example of an artist, who, apparently, signed a number of fans, and also from the circumstance that it formerly belonged to Benjamin West. The mount is kid, the stick tortoise-shell, engraved, silvered, and gilt.

A fan with the subject of the Triumph of Mordecai, signed ‘Germo,’ was exhibited at South Kensington in 1870 by M. Chardin of Paris.

Another example in the possession of Lady Northcliffe has an allegorical subject by Germo, on skin, the stick of ivory finely carved, the guards mother-of-pearl.

Somewhat akin to the mounts above described are those elaborate compositions finely drawn in India ink, with pen or brush, on skin mounts, usually vellum. These, from the absence of colour, were used as mourning fans, the sticks invariably of ivory, piqué, or carved; they are included in most collections that make any pretension to completeness. Lady Bristol possesses one with the subject of Bacchus and Ariadne after Carracci; but by far the most splendid example of this class of fan appeared in the Walker sale in 1882. This is a crowded composition of the Triumph of Alexander (after Le Brun), in which the conqueror is seated in a chariot drawn by elephants; on the reverse the death of Actæon. The stick and guards mother-of-pearl, carved with Cupids and ornaments, painted in panels with episodes in the life of Alexander. Finely variegated gilding.

These fans are characteristically Italian, certainly Italian in their origin. Their production, however, was by no means confined to Italy. M. Duvelleroy has a Dutch example with ivory stick carved à jour, the mount vellum, the subject on the obverse representing an embarkation with numerous figures, on the reverse a dance of peasants with musicians. (Illustration facing p. 192.)

Neapolitan fans divide themselves into two distinct classes or groups—the first having a figure subject en cartouche in the centre, usually taken from classic mythology, the field being occupied by that form of arabesque (grotteschi), so usual in Pompeian wall decoration.

This class of mount dates from the re-discovery and unearthing of Pompeii in 1748, and its production was continued until the end of the century and later. Two excellent examples are given from the collection of Mrs. Bruce Johnston, formerly in the possession of Lord Bessborough. The one with the subject of Bacchus and Ariadne, from a fresco at Pompeii, bought in Naples by Lady Duncannon; the other of a sacrificial subject, also from a Pompeian fresco, obtained in the same city (in the eighteenth century) by Lady Ponsonby.

Many of these mounts have, in lieu of a single central subject, several miniatures en cartouche, associated with arabesques similar in character to those above referred to. A good example appears in the Wyatt collection at South Kensington.

In the second type of Neapolitan mounts, the field is similarly divided into panels, usually one superior and two inferior, representing views, generally the bay of Naples with Vesuvius in the distance, forming the centre panel, and Vesuvius in eruption, and a classic ruin on either side. These, with other Italian views, as the Colosseum in Rome, form a very large class; the panels being associated with arabesque or other ornaments.

Another, important class of Italian mounts gives a view of some famous building or place, occupying the whole field of the fan. Of this, no finer example could be given than the magnificent fan in the possession of Mr. W. Burdett-Coutts, M.P., of the Piazza of St. Mark’s, Venice, after Canaletto (Antonio Canal, b. 1687, d. 1768). The mount is skin; on the right is a group of performing acrobats surrounded by spectators; on the left some strolling players, with peregrinic theatre; on the reverse a view of Venice from the sea. The stick ivory, carved à jour, with characters of the pantomime, some being gilt and painted in ‘vernis Martin,’ others in the pure ivory; the guards carved with marks and musical trophies.

These acrobats, one of the popular Venetian amusements of the period, appear in ‘A Fête on the Piazzetta,’ school of Canaletto, in the Wallace collection.

This fan, together with one of a similar class, with a view of St. Peter’s at Rome, was acquired by the late Baroness at the Walker sale in 1882.

Fans were made for children in Italy and most other countries during the eighteenth century. These were both painted and printed, the latter variety often having the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, on the leaf, doubtless as serving an educational purpose. A collection of these children’s fans was exhibited by Miss Marie Josephs at Drapers’ Hall in 1890.

The beautiful Italian fan, ‘Cupid’s Hive,’ contributed by Lady Bristol, is so charming in the skill of its painted leaf, and the delicate carving of its ivory-jewelled stick, that it is difficult to conceive of its having been placed in the hands of a child. These fans occasionally appear in painted portraits, the Infanta Margaretha-Theresia, by Velasquez, in the Vienna Gallery, being an instance.

The foregoing includes all the principal types of fans produced in Italy during the period we have under consideration; they each present well-marked characteristics, and are therefore not difficult of identification. We have abundant written testimony to the superiority of the Italian workmen during the seventeenth century, and to the extent of the Italian export trade in fans during this period and even later. We have also the evidence of the fans themselves; we shall see, too, how the Paris éventaillistes first learned their craft from the Italian workmen who migrated northward. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, a complete change had taken place in the conditions of fan production, this period witnessing the rise of the French export trade, and the middle of the century its highest development, at which latter period Paris supplied not only Italy but Spain, and to some extent England also. Of this we have more than a hint from the pen of one of the most distinguished Italians of the latter half of the century.

The fan of Goldoni’s comedy was one of the ordinary sort, ‘not worth perhaps five paoli.’ The concluding lines of the play make it clear that a considerable trade in the cheaper French fans was done in Italy at this period (1763), and, by inference, that Paris fans had the best reputation, unless indeed we are to suppose that this was a compliment paid by Goldoni to the country of his adoption, from which, too, he enjoyed a pension:

Candida (to Susanna). It is from Paris, this fan?

Susanna. Yes, from Paris; I guarantee it.

Geltrude. Come, I invite you all to supper, and we will drink to this
fan which did all the harm and brought all the good.

PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES—Continued

SPANISH

RIGID SCREEN
(Carried by the married ladies of Bologna.)The Spaniards, says Henri Estienne, carried towards 1440 large round screens garnished with plumes, and in the sixteenth century folded fans, éventails plissés, enriched with gold and attached to the waist by a gold cord. Of these latter, many, doubtless, were imported from Italy; few, probably, were of native workmanship. A very small pleated fan appears in the hand of a Spanish lady, illustrated in Vecellio, 1590. The rigid flag-fan employed in Italy at this period was also used in Spain, together with the various plumed fans, some in the shape of a peacock’s tail; others formed of the feathers of the ostrich, pheasant, parrot, and Indian raven. During the seventeenth century and later, a large export trade in unpainted pleated fans was done in Paris to Madrid and other Spanish cities, where they were decorated by native artists; many were exported complete, the authenticity of many so-called Spanish fans must always therefore remain a more or less doubtful question. The well-known story of Cano de Arevalo, given in Quilliet’s Dictionnaire des peintres espagnols, sufficiently testifies to the extent of the Paris export trade and the popularity of French fans during this period. This painter, who was a capable miniaturist, finding himself impoverished after a period of extravagance and dissipation, secluded himself for a whole winter, produced a number of fans, and passed them off as newly-imported French ones. The trick proved completely successful, for upon its discovery, he was not only hailed as a master, but was subsequently appointed abaniquero (fan-maker) to the queen. Cano was born at Valdemoro in 1656, and was assassinated in a bull-fight at Madrid in 1696. From the same source (Quilliet) we learn that Cano also ‘essayed water-colour painting on a larger scale, but only succeeded with fans,’ which are still esteemed, the few that are preserved.

This success of Cano must necessarily have given a considerable impetus to the native production of fans, largely used from the fifteenth century onwards by men as well as women.

In brief, the story of Spanish painting during the whole of the sixteenth century is that of a general migration of Spanish artists to Italy for purposes of study, with a consequent strong Italian influence; and an immigration of Italian artists to Spain, chiefly at the invitation of Charles V. The seventeenth century witnessed the rise and full development of a purely native school of painting, headed by Velasquez and Murillo, who, however, can scarcely be said to have exercised any influence upon the fan, since they were painters pure and simple, i.e. their works were distinguished by the qualities of the painter rather than those of the designer; and, especially in the case of Velasquez, their subjects were unsuitable to the fan.

We do not usually look to the last-named painter for elaboration of detail. The folding-fan in the hands of the Spanish lady by Velasquez, ‘La Femme à l’Éventail,’ at Hertford House, would appear to be of leather, judging from the colour and texture, with applied ornaments at regular intervals. This is probably of the scented variety, peau de senteur, made both in Italy and Spain at this period.[92] We have already referred to the portrait of the little Infanta Margaretha-Theresia by Velasquez in the Vienna Gallery, in which a closed folding-fan is represented.

In the Prado at Madrid appear the following portraits:—

The interesting fan representing the capture of the Balearic Islands by the Spaniards in 1759 may be taken as of Spanish workmanship. The subject is taken from a painting in the Escurial. The stick is ivory, carved à jour with three cartouches, painted and gilt; in the centre appear figures of commanders on horseback, a march of troops on the one side and warships on the other; the background ‘gold-fish’ inlay. The paper mount is painted in gouache; and on the reverse is a view of a fort. The style of the painting presents similar characteristics to a fan mount in the Schreiber collection, British Museum, in which we are introduced to a ‘Carrousel at Madrid,’ with a large square filled with spectators appearing at the windows of the houses; in the centre of the background is a pavilion with the king and suite, inscribed Carlos III., and a performance of a number of horsemen led by the ‘Duque de Médinacéli,’ the ‘Marques de Tabara,’ and the ‘Marques de Aztorga.’ The leaf, which has been removed from the stick, is of paper, painted in gouache. A fan of this subject appeared in the exhibition of fans at South Kensington in 1870, in the possession of Madame Charles Heine of Paris; the stick of tortoise-shell, carved and gilt.

This same king, who succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1759, figures as the subject of two fan designs in the Schreiber collection, the one representing his triumphal entry into Naples in 1734 on his election to the crown of the Two Sicilies, with the subject inscribed in Spanish; the leaf signed ‘F^o La Vega Hisp. Let. D.’; below the picture, ‘Miñado por Cayetano Pichini Romano.’ The other, a companion fan design, represents the sham-fight and siege of Gaeta in 1734 on the occasion referred to above; a canopy bears the arms of Spain, and on either side a trophy with the arms of Medicis and Farnese; the subject inscribed in Spanish: ‘F^oo La Vega Hispa^s Bilbilitanus In^v e Delineavit Roma’ and ‘Miⁿado Por Leonardo Egiarmon Flamenco.’ Both these fan designs are vigorously drawn with pen in bistre and worked with India ink, the style betraying a strong late Italian influence.

One of the first acts of Charles, upon his accession to the throne, was to enter into a treaty with Louis XV. known as the ‘Pacte de famille,’ by which these two kings of the house of Bourbon united themselves into an offensive and defensive alliance. By the terms of this treaty, signed 15th August 1761, Spain was obliged to take part in the war in which France and England were then engaged, France hoping to avail herself of the maritime power of Spain, and to prevent Portugal from declaring common cause with England. Its only effect, however, was to inflict upon her ally a series of disasters similar to her own, Spain losing Cuba, Manilla, and the Philippine Islands, and France Martinique, besides being finally expelled from Canada, thus completing the work begun by Wolfe at Quebec some two years previously.

The sequel to these events was the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the preliminaries of peace being signed at Fontainebleau on the 3rd November of the previous year.

By the terms of this instrument, Canada, the islands of Minorca, Grenada and the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica and Tobago were ceded to Britain, while to France were restored Belleisle on the French coast, the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Marigalante, Desirade, and St. Lucia in the West Indies. Havannah was restored to Spain, the Spaniards in return ceding Florida to the English, and agreeing also to make peace with Portugal.

In La Revue Hispanique, tome viii., appeared an article by M. Gabriel Marcel, reprinted in pamphlet form under the title of ‘Un Éventail Historique du dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1901,’ describing and illustrating a remarkable fan in the cabinet of a Parisian amateur whose name is not given, commemorating the event above referred to.

The stick is ivory, carved with an agreeable pell-mell of cartouches, gilt; the centre being occupied by a conversation galante of four figures in the costume of the Watteau period.

In the centre of the skin leaf, finely painted in gouache, is a stone table carved in high relief with figures of Cupids, near which are the Kings of France and Spain, each accompanied by a female figure representing the respective countries, and bearing a shield of arms; above, a figure of Peace crowned with olive leaves appears from the clouds and directs the ceremony. In the middle distance is a tribune on which are seated three female figures, with a cornucopia of abundance, and the arms of France and Spain; above is a figure of Fame with a trumpet.

In the more immediate foreground are the Kings of England and Portugal, their identity being determined by the blazoning of the shields which accompany them. Court officials, together with their ladies, complete the composition.

The reverse, which is less interesting, and probably by another hand, represents an architectural structure with, again, the arms of France, and above, those of France and Spain entwined.

Although it is possible that the fan may be of Spanish manufacture, it is more probably French, since it bears all the characteristics of French work of the period of Louis Quinze. It was probably made either for a royal princess, or for the wife of some prominent official who took part in the negotiations of the treaty.

The classical revival of the middle of the eighteenth century was not without its effect on Spain; fans being painted in this country also with subjects from the Greek mythology. At the exhibition at South Kensington in 1870, the Dowager-Countess of Craven exhibited a large Spanish dress fan, the mount richly painted on vellum, with a centre subject of Aurora and Zephyr, the floral ornaments embossed in gold and spangled; the stick carved ivory and mother-of-pearl, with figures in gold relief variegated and spangled, jewelled stud.[93]

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, a class of fan was made in which the stick, usually of tortoise-shell, but also of ivory and other material, was elaborately pierced and carved, occasionally in the most ornate fashion, the brins numbering from eight to ten, the guards wide, both being heavily incrusted with gold and silver. The mounts of these fans were always narrow, measuring about three-sevenths of the length of the stick. This class of fan, examples of which appear in most collections, by general consent has been associated with Spain, although, doubtless, it was produced in other countries also.

One of the earliest of these fans, as well as one of the finest, is that in the possession of Lady Bristol, described and illustrated in the succeeding chapter, page 163. This, from the skill displayed in its finely designed stick, and the style of its delicately painted leaf, is more probably French than Spanish. Interesting examples of this class of fan are given from the collections of H.R.H. the Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Brandenburg and Mrs. Frank W. Gibson. In the first-named instance the stick is tortoiseshell, with gold incrustations of figures of Roman warriors, musicians in the costume of the period of the fan (c. 1780), Cupids, and other ornaments: the leaf a pretty pastoral; the work, although probably Spanish, showing a strong French influence.

Mrs. Gibson’s fan belonged to her grandmother, who was a Spaniard; the leaf, probably, represents the betrothal of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, Louis being but sixteen at the time of his marriage in 1770. The Austrian Court was closely allied to that of Spain; and this subject, therefore, would naturally appeal to the Spaniards. A wedding fan occurs in the collection of Lady Lindsay, having for its centre medallion a lady’s dressing-room, with Cupid holding a mirror; on the sides are a Cupid lighting his torch from an altar, and a Cupid with bow and arrows. The stick of tortoise-shell, finely silvered and gilt.

CORRIGENDUM