Fans from China - historical development

Magazine Antiques, August, 1994 by Neville Johns Irons

Long before the birth of Christ the fan originated in China, where it became an integral part of everyday life. Fans cooled the humid air in summer, fanned the sparks of cooking fires, and were incorporated into the elaborate language of etiquette at court.

Over time, three basic types of Chinese fans evolved: the rigid pien-mien, or face cover fan; the T'uan-shan, or ceremonial fan; and the Che shan, or folding fan.

The pien-mien fan was covered with feathers or silk stretched over a frame and either painted or embroidered. (It was not until the Song dynasty [960-1279] that painting these fans became an accepted, indeed esteemed, branch of art.) This type of fan derives its name from the use to which it was put: hiding the face and consequently concealing the emotions. Officials, for example, shielded their faces with these fans to signify their unwillingness to be approached by petitioners.

The T'uan-shan was a much larger version of the pien-mien. It was usually mounted on a long pole and used in conjunction with banners and canopies for court and other official ceremonies. According to an eighteenth-century manual, the most favored ceremonial fans were those adorned with whole wings of pheasants or peacocks, the latter imported from the tributary kingdom of Indochina.(1)

The third type is the folding fan, Che shan in Chinese. The character for Che means white feathers held in the hand, and shan, the word for fan, means feathers under the roof. Since the wing feathers of a bird fold and unfold, what more logical description could there be for the folding fan?

Trade between China and the West began abortively with the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, and then in earnest with the formation of the Honourable East India Company in England in 1599 and the Dutch East India Company some three years later. In 1699 the British company recorded the importation of twenty thousand of the "finest and richest fannes" and an order for ninety thousand more, "three quarters to be on white paper, a quarter on coloured and all to be well painted with figures on one side and flowers upon the other; the sticks to be lacquered black and inlaid with mother-of-pearl."(2) The flood of Chinese fans caused English fanmakers to petition Parliament in 1752 for protection in the form of import duties. When their appeals went unheard they began to imitate Chinese fans so well that there is still confusion as to the origin of some fans in both public and private collections. This is compounded on occasion when a leaf painted in the West is mounted on Chinese sticks. However, the question of origin can be resolved in most cases by careful examination.

An important and beautiful subsection of the folding fan is the Hu shan, or what is erroneously known in the West as the brise fan. The translation of Hu shan is "rigid folding fan," which is not only historically correct but more accurate than the French brise (broken). Hu were ivory writing tablets, pierced at the base and suspended from the waist by a silk cord. Court officials used them to record their reports and to take down the emperor's reply. The origin of the Hu shan can only be approximated, but it certainly predates the paper folding fan (which was introduced some time in the tenth century), and of all export fans it has the longest history. The earliest examples of Hu shan made for export - dating from 1690 to 1730 - are small and wedge-shaped to conform to contemporary European fashions. As can be seen from the example in Plate IV, the decoration consists of a Chinese interpretation of Western design painted on the ivory in a restrained palate of colors already familiar in the West from Chinese porcelain.(3)

The great age of Chinese export fans lasted from about 1760 to about 1850, and the range and quantity were truly astonishing. Chinese records for 1880, for example, list exports of 6,287,989 "fans of all kinds," among many other products.(4) The boxes made for fans exported to Europe are also of great interest, not only for their quality but because much can be learned from studying their labels. It was by doing so that I was able to list the fanmakers of the Portuguese enclave of Macao as distinct from those of Canton, China.(5) This led to the recognition of definite types of Macao fans.

In China, ceremonial feathered fans were rigid, while those made for export folded. Because of their special place in Chinese custom, the feather fans for export were almost always packed in very fine boxes.

The best known type of export fan is the so-called mandarin, or fan of a hundred faces. These intricate confections enjoyed a great vogue between about 1825 and 1875 and became the subject of many myths, one of which claims that the painted faces of the courtiers were made from mandarins' fingernails (when in fact they are ivory). The true lineage of this type of fan and its style of decoration is the highly decorated porcelain of Canton.

The spectacular workmanship and seemingly endless variety of Chinese fans of the eighteenth and nineteenth century never cease to astonish collectors of the ever-dwindling supply.