Inventories of churches and monasteries include the fan. In one of Amiens, about 1300, is “flabellum factum de serico et auro ad repellendas muscas.” Another, of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, 1363, gives “Item, duo flabella, vulgariter nuncupata muscalia, ornata perlis.” Nor ought we to omit some entries of the same kind in English inventories. In one, of the cathedral of Salisbury, in 1314, are “ij flabella de serico et pergameno.” The church of St. Faith, in the crypt of St. Paul’s, possessed among its ornaments in 1298 “unum muscatorium de pennis pavonum.” Still more to our present purpose was the fan given to a chantry in the cathedral of Rochester, by bishop Hanno, in 1346; “unum flabellum de serico cum virga eburnea:” or the “flabellum de serico” named in the inventory of the property of Robert Bilton, bishop of Exeter, in 1330. John Newton, treasurer of York minster, gave to that church about the year 1400 a splendid fan, which was in the treasury there when everything of the kind was destroyed by the commissioners of Edward the sixth: “Manubrium flabelli argenteum deauratum, ex dono Joh. Newton, cum ymagine episcopi in fine enameled, pond’ v. unc.” It is not at all improbable that fans were used in England at mass even in parochial or country churches until a late period. The following entry occurs in the accounts of the churchwardens of Walberswick, in Suffolk: a payment in the year 1493 for “a bessume of pekok’s fethers, iv. d.”
Care must be observed, however, not to set down all works in ivory which are similar to no. 373 as having been the handles of ecclesiastical fans. Other church ceremonies required utensils of the same kind; though, probably, they were seldom if ever so profusely decorated and enriched with carving. For example, holy-water sprinklers would often have had ivory handles; and one is specified as belonging to St. Paul’s in 1295, “aspersorium de ebore.” More than this; whip handles, which we see on mirror cases and in illuminations, and other like things were made and ornamented for secular purposes. Hearne gives a copy of a curious inscription on the handle of a whip found in the ruins of the abbey of St. Alban. It commemorates the gift of four horses to the monks of that house from Gilbert of Newcastle. Hearne leaves the date of the handle doubtful, but is disposed to put it about the end of the fourteenth century.
The wife of Roger de Mortimer of Wigmore castle in Herefordshire had, among other valuable things as specified in the inventory taken in Edward the second’s reign (before quoted) “item, j scourgiam de ebore.”
The etching represents a very beautiful reliquary, French work of the sixteenth century, in the Kensington museum.
TRIPTYCH, SERVING AS A RELIQUARY IN CARVED IVORY
ABOUT 1480. ENTIRE WIDTH OPENED 10¼ in. S.K.M. (No 4336)
D. JONES FECIT.