Consider the handheld fan. What began as a necessity evolved into an accessory and now is an all-but-lost art.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published June 8, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - They began, like most inventions, as a practical solution to a human quandary: How to stir the still, hot air. Sitting on a throne of burnished gold 5,000 years ago was all very well for a pharaoh, but, gosh, it could get warm in old Egypt.
The first fans were large leaves and fronds plucked from trees to counter the heat and flies. The fauna, though efficient, was lacking in the aesthetics department. So no surprise that when Tutankhamen's tomb was opened, it delivered some impressive ceremonial gold numbers with vestiges of ostrich feathers, deployments for slaves to wave over his noble head. Fans such as those were the equivalent of our ceiling fans today, their usefulness requiring a source of power beyond the person getting the relief.
Handheld fans, which have been discovered in China dating from the second century B.C. and in a fourth century Roman sarcophagus in York, England, became the more common type of fan over the centuries, economical in size and less labor-intensive.
During the 18th century, considered the golden age of fanmaking, fans' beauty was often in service to the realities of poor dental care. Leaning forward with a come-hither look in her eyes, a lady could disguise her rotting or absent teeth by covering them with a fan bearing a picturesque scene copied from Watteau or Fragonard and painted on pleated silk or thin leather.
By their apotheosis in the 19th century, fans had become less a fashionable tool and more an ornamental form of communication that could seduce with a flirtatious flutter or dismiss with a peremptory snap, an accessory of kinetic art.
A beguiling collection of handheld fans on display at the Florida International Museum, borrowed from the large holdings at the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota, showcases this period, the several hundred years in the fan's long history in Western culture before the fan, like so many other affectations that evolved from a practicality to bagatelle, became more valued for form over function.
But as this exhibition demonstrates, what a graceful, thoroughbred run fans had.
The earliest European handheld fans were rigid, often needed in cold climates as screens to protect ladies' faces from the heat of blazing fireplaces. A pair from 19th century England for that purpose is decorated with chinoiserie scenes and shaped in elegant Regency curves.
Most in the show are folding fans, which were probably invented by the Japanese in the seventh century and made their way into Europe over trade routes.
As the 18th century rolled around, folding fans became an indispensable accoutrement for the fashionable lady, and artisans obliged her need for a wardrobe of them with an array of embellishments.
The two most common types were the pleated and the brise (pronounced bree-SAY). Pleated fans were constructed by attaching fabric, animal skin or paper - called the "leaf" and often painted or printed, then folded like an accordion - to "sticks," made of mother of pearl, tortoise shell, ivory, metal or wood. Brise fans were made only of sticks. Within those two categories is astonishing variety and artistic license.
A 19th century fan made of pink ostrich feathers held together by broad faux tortoise-shell sticks is about as subtle a come-on as a Mae West bon mot. Nearby is an almost cerebral 18th century brise fan of real tortoise shell, much smaller, pierced and carved with a lacy delicacy that is best appreciated by walking around to the back of the case to view the light filtering through.
Curator Cynthia Duval has arranged the collection so that such juxtapositions are easily made, even without much in the way of wall text. Some of the fans are presented folded so the viewer can marvel at the decoration of the guards - the end sticks - and the subtle care in designing a beautiful "profile" for the compacted fan.
And the stories they could tell that we can only guess! Was the 19th century Italian fan, its leaf painted with a scene of romance, made as a wedding gift for "Antonia," the name worked in filigree on mother-of-pearl sticks, and was the tiny mirror attached to the guard a reminder to check herself out before marching down the aisle?
And why was the Spanish lacquered fan, gloriously over the top with Victorian papier mache sticks, probably never used, its original packing and bill of sale - May 21, 1851 - found with it?
One can imagine a 19th century dowager grandly presiding over her salon in possession of a black-lace fan clasped with mother-of-pearl and gold sticks. Or a Parisian boulevardier selecting the sprightly little fan made of bright yellow Brazilian marabou feathers centered with a tiny (real) blue hummingbird to woo a mademoiselle. And the mademoiselle's delight in receiving it in its fitted box, covered in floral fabric in those same colors.
Some of the fans were patently commemorative. An Italian folding fan's kidskin leaf is painted with monuments from an 18th century Grand Tour. A gold-washed silver filigree fan has "Milano" worked into the metal, souvenir of a trip.
What becomes apparent in this procession is that by the 19th century, fans, like so many other possessions, no longer conferred noble primacy. They could be mass-produced for common folks, but the handworked fans had become, like jewels and household possessions, part of a lingua franca that could be learned by anyone with enough money, one more way to show off one's wealth. It's obvious, seeing them together in a case, that the owner of an 18th century fan made of paper painted to resemble lace panels and attached to modest ivory sticks didn't have nearly as much to prove as she who carried a far more elaborate version a century later, bigger and heavier with carved wood gilt sticks and the equivalent of a miniature mural painted on its leaf.
In general, it seems, 19th century fans were often about social one-upsmanship, and craftsmen rose to the occasion. Before, the use of the fan created drama. Now the fan itself becomes the point of dramatic departure. An exquisite example is one whose mother-of-pearl sticks are carved so intricately as to emulate the pastoral scene painted on its leaf.
Fans endured into the 20th century; most included in this show continue in the bigger-is-better tradition of the preceding era while linking themselves to a more modern decorative sensibility. A swallow embroidered in black sequins swans its way across a large French fan that seems made to accompany a slinky crepe de chine dress, as does one having an arts-and-craft look in its design and colors - stylized flowers in off-green and dusky red - appliqued onto black netting.
The most delightful fans are unexpectedly small, made by the Devellory Company of London in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with cats and dogs hand-painted on them. One is painted with a front and rear view of a bulldog, fashioned so its ears rise over the top of the leaf.
A tangent element of the exhibition is the occasional Japanese or Chinese fan, not those made for export and catering to fulsome Western tastes. Fans in those cultures were considered high art and used by men and women, the former preferring the folding type that could be stored in a kimono sleeve. A Night and Day set, carved ivory for morning, sandalwood for evening, has the refined spareness of a Japanese tea service.
But it's clear that fans in Europe and America were becoming quaint relics of the days before women could occupy their hands with cigarettes and cocktails in the comfort of a room cooled by electric fans and, eventually, air conditioning. In typical cultural devolution, fans were appropriated by advertisers - funeral homes, amusement centers and political aspirants printing their logos on cardboard attached to crude wooden handles - and by burlesque dancers who used them for different sorts of coverage.
The grand fan perched at the gallery entrance is an exception, a billowy froth of white ostrich feathers held with a sterling silver handle. It is part of a limited edition copied from one carried by Princess Diana at the time of her wedding in 1981, an homage to the Prince of Wales' official plumage. A photograph of her holding the original at a formal event accompanies the copy. It is a glamorous irrelevance, befitting the anachronistic life of a 20th century princess, and returns the fan to its roots with a regal wave.
"Fans Glorious Fans" is at the Florida International Museum, 100 Second Street N, St. Petersburg, through Sept. 26. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $10 adults, $8 seniors, $5 students, free children younger than 6. Included is admission to "Russian Odyssey: Riches of the State Russian Museum" through July 11; "Space Hunt," a maze with interactive stations, through Aug. 8, and the ongoing "The Cuban Missile Crisis." (727) 822-3693.
