| Chinese Fan, paper mount, painted & richly gilt, red lacquered stick. | Miss Moss. |
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.