Ladies fan, 1750
Wednesday, June 27, 1711, Mr. Addison writes a letter to The Spectator:
Mr. Spectator – Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometime do more excution with them. To the end therefore that ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practiced at court. The ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice a-day in my great hall, where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the following words of command: – Handle your fans, Unfurl your fans, Discharge your fans, Flutter your fans – By the right observation of these few plain words of commands, a woman of a tolerable genius, who will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the space of but one half-year, shall be able to give her fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that little modish machine… For the rest of Addison’s letter to The Spectator, please click here.
Commemorative fan, Nelson and the Battle of the Nile, 1804
Display case, Fan Museum
A lady’s fan carried far more symbolism than the mere act of cooling by agitating the air. At first considered a novelty, the fan gained popularity in Europe in the mid-sixteenth century and could be seen in the paintings of fine Elizabethan ladies. The folding fan, which was introduced from the Far East, gradually replaced the fixed fan. Made from vellum or paper, these fashionable and expensive accessories lent themselves well to elaborate painting and decoration. By 1709, fans began to be manufactured in London and a Fan Makers’ Company was established. Commemorative fans that celebrated an historic event were quite popular among the well to do, and their styles echoed the fashion of the day. Neoclassical fans, like the commemorative fan depicted above, lacked color and were generally bare of decoration, reflecting the simple white muslin dresses so popular during the Regency era. When dresses became more ornate and colorful again, fans followed the trend. They were highly prized for their aesthetics, for “in the ordinary fan of the present day Art has not strayed far from Nature.”
Goya, Woman with Fan
Over the centuries, a language of the fan evolved (see link below). Legend has it that by the time the Victorian era began fan gestures had been rigidly codified, wherein each movement and snap of the wrist carried a message fraught with meaning, although some experts dispute this. (See comment below made by Pierre Henri Biger, a fan expert.) Once popular both during the day and evening, fans gradually became restricted only for the evening, increasing in size in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Their popularity waned and waxed as the quote below suggests, but until they could be cheaply manufactered in large quantities, they remained the province of only those who could afford them. In the late 19th century to early 1920′s, fans were made in profusion to carry advertisements, and were given away as souvenirs by hotels, restaurants, and businesses.*
Fan Design, The Lower Rooms, Bath
For just a century after Addison wrote, the fan figured prominently in polite society, matched, when the sword went out of fashion, against the snuff-box and the clouded cane, and often victorious. The satirists and dramatists wore in turn bitter and pleasant in their references to it. Painters and their sitters paraded it ostentatiously. It is said to have done wonders in diplomacy, and who could wonder at the success of flying sap and masked battery against garrisons defended by an eye-glass, a pinch of snuff, and a malacca. The fan’s apogee was in the days of the minuet de la cour. But since athletic waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas have elbowed out their courtly predecessors, the once ” modish little machine” has retired into obscurity with the “wall-flowers,” or, if at all, is used by the dancers as inartistically as though it were the archetypal ” vanne” or wind engine. Brighter days may, however, dawn, and society which, in its way back to costumes of the Watteau and Pastoral periods, has already reached the stage of short waists and long trains, may over in our time reclaim the little exile from its temporary partial shade. – Nature and Art, by Day & Sons, 1866, p62
More about this fascinating fashion accessory
- Language of the Fan
- More fan language
- Sweet seductive language of fans
- Victorian fan language – Please note, these four posts are sometimes conflicting in describing signals and meaning
- My other post: Lady’s Regency Fans
- Fan-Tastic Museum
- Fans of the 18th Century
- Fans in 18th Century Europe
- Fans: A Link Between Cultures
- Fan Etiquette: PetitFrance
- *Fans, Kay Staniland, Museum of London, 1985
Click on image.
I think my favorite signal from “The Language of Fans” link is “Hitting any object:’I’m impatient’”
I love fans! One of these days I will have to invest in a particularly pretty one!
Oooh, this is inspiring! I think it’s time to bring the fan back. Complete with secret code.
Dear Ladies (and gentlemen)
Of course I understand well how exciting this “Language of the fans” may be for young ladies.
Alas Addison’s article in “The Spectator” was of course satirical, and the supposed “Language of the Fan” is only a 19th century marketing invention of fansellers.
Nobody has been able to find in private papers, novels or other documents of 17th or 18th centuries the smaller evidence of the use of such a language.
And try to convince your husbands and boyfriends to learn such a language… without any tool for answering !
But go on with your interest in fans, and especially old fans. Even without this Language, they have a lot to tell !
Pierre Henri Biger (webmaster of Place de l’Eventail website, member of Fan Association of North America, Fan Circle International, Cecle de l’Eventail etc.)
It was interesting to see your post there, but slightly disappointing for me, as I was hoping to research this topic and do a presentation at Australia’s next Jane Austen Festival in April 2011. Do you think it would be possible to do 15-25 minutes on the way fans were actually used during Jane Austen’s lifetime in a manner which is hands-on and interesting to all sorts of Jane Austen fans? I just feel that it might be disappointing for them to find that this language is a fiction, is there still etiquette we could teach people and be historically accurate? Most of the patrons are costumers who are quite keen on accuracy.
Lovely comprehensive post. Amazing how many people don’t realize Addison’s letter is a joke.
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