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CHAPTER IV

OLD FANS AND PLAYING CARDS

Oriental Fans-Italian, Spanish, and Dutch FansFrench Fans-English Eighteenth-Century Fans -The Modern Fan-The Fan Mounts of Charles Conder - Early European Playing Cards Oriental Cards Fifteenth-Century Seventeenth-Century Cards - Modern

Cards

Pictorial Cards.

It is obvious that the fan originated in the East: it may have been in its embryo stage only a palm leaf or a feather, but its necessity in a tropical climate brought it into being in remote ages. The heat and the flies demanded a protective draught. The illustration of the king on an old pack of Hindustanee playing cards (p. 185), shows his fan-bearer behind him with a whisk.

In regard to European fans they were in common use in Italy in the time of Thomas Coryate, contemporary with Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, who, in his Crudities relating his travels, gives a picture of the prevalence of the fan in Italy: "Here I will mention a thing, that although

perhaps it will seeme but frivolous to divers readers that have already travelled in Italy, yet because unto many that neither have beene there, nor ever intend to go thither while they live, it will be a meere novelty, I will not let it passe unmentioned. The first Italian fannes that I saw in Italy did I observe in this space betwixt Pizighiton and Cremona but afterwards I observed them common in most places of Italy where I travelled. These fannes both men and women of the country doe carry, to coole themselves withal in the time of heat, by the often fanning of their faces. Most of them are very elegant and pretty things. For whereas the fanne consisteth of a painted piece of paper and a little wooden handle; the paper which is fastened into the top, is on both sides most curiously adorned with excellent pictures, either of serious things tending to dalliance, having some witty Italian verses or fine emblems written under them; or of some notable Italian city, with a briefe description thereof added thereunto. These fannes are of a meane price, for a man may buy one of the fayrest of them for so much money as countervaileth our English groate."

But in spite of Coryate's records we know that Queen Elizabeth had twenty-seven fans in her wardrobe, one of which Sir Francis Drake gave her of red and white feathers with gold handle embellished with pearls and diamonds. Another was a gift from the Earl of Leicester, with the device of a lion rampant with a white bear muzzled at its

foot, in token of his complete subjection to his royal mistress, his cognizance being a bear.

It was this whimsical eccentric who introduced the fork into England from Italy. Apparently the Italians were the only people who used a fork. Coryate speaks of it as a novelty: "so that whatsoever he be that, sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meat with his fingers from which all at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company as having transgressed the lawes of good manners."

It was Jonas Hanway, another traveller, who popularized the umbrella in England in the eighteenth century. Women used umbrellas before Hanway's day, but he set the fashion for men. The fork, the fan, and the umbrella have remained, but the muff, used by men as well as women in the seventeenth century as shown by Hollar's etchings of the time of Charles I, has been yielded to the gentler sex. There is no reason to suppose that the fan was ever used by men either in France or in England, L'éventail, c'est l'epée de la femme.

Oriental Fans.-The oriental fan, particularly the Chinese, is rich in carving-carving that the European can only marvel at, and dare not try to imitate. Among the Chinese fans there are some of the finest sandalwood faultlessly carved. Others of ivory are pierced with figures of animals or birds, or minutely carved with delicate lace

pattern in fine open work. Others again have figure subjects, pagodas, and bridges, and trees with the prunus bloom, the willow tree, and the doves, and tiny figures suggesting the lovers in the story attached to the willow plate. Some Chinese fans have only the guards and sticks of ivory, whilst on the body or mount of fine silk is painted groups of Chinese in brilliant costume with gloriously decorated symbolic vases in the scrolled corners. The highly decorative feathers of the argus pheasant are sometimes used with tortoiseshell guards.

Italian, Spanish, and Dutch Fans.-Italian fans exhibit a brilliance of colour and are elegantly designed and painted. Some of the most illustrious artists have painted fan mounts, and often they have jewelled studs to fasten the sticks and guards together. With so fine a gallery to draw upon, it is not to be wondered at that the Italian fan maker often reproduced famous pictures on his mounts. The Italian fan illustrated (p. 161) has the sticks and guard of carved ivory. The mount is kid and is painted in water-colours with a copy of the Aurora of Guido. In date this is about 1770.

The character of a nation is most certainly to be traced on its fans. Spanish fans nearly always depict some love incident-a lover languishing in the moonlight, singing a canzon to his lady love, while accompanying himself on the mandoline, or there is a fierce matador standing in picturesque

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Painted in water colours on a kid skin mount, representing Aurora, after the picture by Guido.

(At the Victoria and Albert Museum.)

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