‘The revolution of 1848,’ says M. Rondot, in his report on the 1851 Exhibition, ‘would have crushed the French fan industry if it had not been for the orders for exportation. The production, which in Paris amounted to the value of three million francs in 1847, was reduced by half in the disastrous year that followed; of 565 workers of both sexes 315 were thrown out of employment. At the time of writing’ (1854), continues this author, ‘the industry was in a very flourishing condition.’ This prosperity has been maintained to the present day, ‘Paris being still the only city where a fan may command the price of a hundred pounds.’[166]
The number of artists and workers employed in Paris and the Oise, says M. Duvelleroy in his report on the Paris Exhibition of 1867, is 4000; the annual value of the production being ten million francs, of which three-fourths is for the foreign market. ‘Paris et la Chine ont seuls le monopole du commerce des éventails, mais c’est aujourd’hui, en Europe, une industrie toute française, pour laquelle le monde entier est notre tributaire.’[167] The evidence of this exhibition, further affirms this author, showed that France incontestably held the first rank.
‘Spain, who for thirty years had tried to organise her industry, has only arrived at the production of the commoner classes of fans. Italy, who uses fans greatly, does not make them; Portugal being only the third in the European market.’ The British record is correspondingly poor. ‘In the Great Exhibition of 1851,’ says Lady Bristol, ‘there was not one single fan of British manufacture exhibited,’[168] and so far as painted fans are concerned, the statement made by Redgrave in his notes to the Catalogue of the Fan Exhibition at South Kensington in 1870, ‘that there were no English fanmakers living except those who made cheap and coarse fans, is substantially correct to-day.’[169]
| Empire Fan, Ivory brisé, 10” x 5-7/8”. | Mr Leopold de Rothschild. C.V.O. |
| Portuguese Fan, painted view, lacquered stick, c.1800. | Mr J.H. Etherington Smith. |
The evidence of the fans themselves bears out these statements. The instance may be cited of an engraved fan in the Schreiber collection (No. 69, Mounted Fans) recording Mr. Albert Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851, bearing the imprint of the French firm, ‘Leroux et Cie., Fan’s Manufactr., 41 rue Notre Dame de Nazereth, Paris.’ This obviously produced exclusively for the British market.
From Germany comes similar evidence of French pre-eminence; the wedding fan of the Grand Duchess of Baden, exhibited at Karlsruhe in 1891, is signed by a French artist, ‘A. Soldé, 1855,’ who produced a number of fans, and is made by a well-known French maker, Frédéric Meyer of Paris. This is painted with the subject of a sacrifice at the Altar of Hymen, and portrait busts of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, the initials F. and L., together with ‘Coblentz, 30 Sept. 1855,’ and is a typical fan of the mid-nineteenth century.
Of the work of Soldé, a most excellent example, Le Bal d’Amours, is given, graciously lent by H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. The leaf is signed on both obverse and reverse, ‘A. Soldé,’ and inscribed, ‘Grand Bal donné sous le patronage de Madame.’ The mother-of-pearl stick finely pierced and carved. This formed part of the famous collection of Queen Victoria.