Fan Etiquette and Usage History

This fan exhibition, under the auspices of the Society of Decorative Art, is an exceedingly attractive one and has been well attended. It will continue during the coming week.

 THE FAN EXHIBITION

VARIETIES SEEN AT THE SOCIETY OF DECORATIVE ART

Quite a number of valuable additions have been made to the loan collection of fans now exhibited at the rooms of the Society of Decorative Art, No. 28 East Twenty-first street. Fans belonging to the American Revoluntary period have been contributed. These are of French make, and were certainly once very much in fashion. One represents the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, with Gen. Washington receiving the sword of the English officer. A host of British soldiers, in carmine coats defile from a fortress. Another is the glorification of Washington, with two emblematical figures. The resemblance to the Father of his Country is in no case very striking.

In older times, undoubtedly leading events of the day were produced on fans and became la mode. A pretty souvenir or the day is an oil fan, which must have been used by soine little Miss, of 1770. A fan which once belonged to Mrs. Symmes, wife of Col. Symmes, an officer of the British Army during the Revolution, finds a resting place in one of the cases. There is here, too, a fan once the property of Mme. Doche, a famous French actress, who used it in Alexandre Dumas's play of “La Dame aux Camélias.” Here are gorgeous fans presented to Mrs. Grant while she was on her travels. One is of heavy ivory, covered in part with gorgeous lacquer; another is of tortoise shell. In this same collection are silver filigree fans. It is not an uncommon thing to see a fan, of a composite character, that is, to the sticks belonging to one period has been added the leaf of a later time. This is quite evident in several fans where the brins or sticks of the period of Louis XIV are the more valuable.

In modern fans, there is a lovely one, painted daintily by De Beaumont, a group of ladies by the seaside. Here is a Venetian dagger fan, a real stiletto, which has been incased in an ivory form, fashioned exactly like a fan. This must be an Oriental idea which Venice copied. This fan may have brought about some tragic conclusion to a love drama, such as Alfred de Musset might have written. There is an ugly Chinese dagger fan here which might be carried and no one would suspect its dangerous character. The Chinese make a peculiar fan which answers for a bludgeon. It is of solid iron or steel, handsomely ornamented, but it can inflict a stunning blow like a billy, so that being “brained by a lady's fan” is after all quite a possible thing. It is said that these dagger fans are of Japanese origin, and as the Chinese are not inventive, they probably copied them. Fans of this character are often carried by the Chinese in San Francisco, and are to be found occasionally there in the Chinese pawn shops. The blade is short and sharp and resembles a Malay Kris.

No people are so fastidious as the Chinese in regard to fans, as they use a different fan for Summer or Winter. Fashion has to do with the number of sticks. Even the poorest classes use fans, and a coollie, as he staggers under his load, fans himself. Fans are used even to preserve a kind of incognito, for when one great Mandarin meets another, instead of going through the ceremony of a long salute, etiquette permits them to cover their faces with their fans, and they are then supposed not to see one another. There can be no doubt that fans are used in China, as are penny books or circulars, and an author in Fraser's Magazine tells that the murdering of the Roman Catholic priests and Sisters was produced on pictorial Chinese fans and widely distributed. This fan exhibition, under the auspices of the Society of Decorative Art, is an exceedingly attractive one and has been well attended. It will continue during the coming week. – The New York Times,  March of 1882

🌹Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia