| Photo by J. Leroy. | |
| Découpé Fan. | Musée de Cluny. |
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.