appeals to their taste in this respect, confining their attention to the particular school whither their fancy may lead them. They may generalize and select typical Chinese examples, an old Japanese fan or two, and typical specimens of certain European schools. They may attain to the highest flights of fan-collecting by searching Europe for the finest specimens of the French fan of the Louis XV and XVI periods when the art was at its zenith, when Lancret and Boucher, and other court artists painted fan mounts, and Martin with his celebrated varnish added that tone to the delicate pencil work of his contemporaries which has won him everlasting renown. Perhaps, however, the collector of fans eschews a pretence to art instincts and leans to the subject on account of its attraction as providing contemporary records of costume of fashion, of gaiety and frivolity holding the mirror to a dead age. He may endow them with a human interest; above these fans "soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again," and fluttered the fan not more quickly than the little heart beat behind it. A fan, the disciplinary wand of the schoolmaster at Tokio that has corrected, maybe, a Hokahasi or a Togo, is as worthy of contemplative reverie as one over which Sarah Churchill has ogled, or another behind whose ample mount the incomparable Mrs. Jordan may have yawned away the hour of my Lord Bishop's sermon. The collector, in any case, will be interested in a few facts regarding his hobby. Technically a fan consists of two parts, the mount (la feuille), and the sticks (la monture). The stick is composed of a number of blades (brins) which when closed are folded between two outer guards (panaches), and in counting the blades it is usual to exclude these two. The shoulder (gorge), is the height of the fan from the lower edge of the mount to the end of the handle (la tête), through which passes the pin (rivure) which joins the parts together and enables the fan to open mechanically. The shoulder of the guard juts out and tapers down to the end of the fan. This shoulder and guard is one piece, and is of ivory, or tortoiseshell, or wood, and is capable of receiving various kinds of rich carving or decoration. The blades also receive elaborate ornament; they may be wide apart or close together according to their width, and at varying periods are of differing numbers. The length of these blades, which corresponds with the length of the shoulder, determines the depth of the mount. Sometimes the guard has been deeper than the mount, and the latter is a narrow lunette capable of circumscribed decoration. Fans of the Louis XVI period have from eighteen to twenty-one blades, on opening they present a close surface of richly decorated ivory or vernis-martin, or tortoiseshell, decorated with jewels or having gold and silver inlay. Usually these fans are bold, the shoulder is short and the mount occupies a full half-circle. Other fans of From an engraving by C. Heath after a painting by Jenkins, "The Squire's Pew." Date about 1830. LADY WITH FAN. From an engraving by J. Thomson after a drawing by C. R. Leslie, Date about 1850. |