The language of the fan

From across a crowded room, a young gentleman watches as a young woman looks directly at him and slowly closes her wide open fan.

At the height of the Victorian era, a special type of sign language evolved using a fan to communicate. There are thirty-two different gestures, each with a unique message. What started out as a simple device to keep people cool on hot summer days has grown far beyond functionality over the centuries. “The World of Women”, published in 1889, proclaimed that if a woman “could not handle her fan with the proper air, she was still a nobody”, and that “women are armed with fans like men with swords” . The same author also points out that “the eyes of the Spanish ladies gave them unfair assistance in the language of the fan”, as they were more adept at “looking with the eyes and flapping”, a clear handicap for proper English ladies.

Despite the social implications, fans were also part of a woman’s adornment. The combination of size, shape, decorative techniques and materials gives us endless varieties of fans. And where there is variety, there are collectors.

Fan collecting was extremely popular between 1860 and 1910, which may be one of the reasons why the fan language became so popular. The Christies auction house in South Kensington, England, auctions over a thousand fans annually.

For the most part, ancient fans were made from natural materials. The guard, the stick and the blades, for example, could be made of lacquered wood, mother of pearl, ivory or tortoise. The frame could be made of cotton, silk, or even lace, although machine-made laces existed in the 19th century.

Hand painted fans from the 18th century are quite rare and can sell for thousands of dollars, but there are many elegant printed fans from the 19th century that can still be bought for around a hundred dollars. These simpler rear fans can be made from less expensive materials like celluloid or bamboo shields, sticks, and blades. They were decorated with printed images rather than hand-painted.

Fans can also be crossover collectibles. The fans were popular souvenirs from the World’s Fair. While they were usually printed using a process called chromolithography, they were colorful commemorative. People who collect exhibition memorabilia would also want this type of fan, and this adds to its value. A souvenir fan from the Paris Exposition of 1889 sold earlier this year at the Kodner Galleries for $ 750.00.

You may be wondering right now what became of our young lady. Did she fan the flames of love or did she extinguish them? I think romance is boring without anticipation and with a little bit of mystery.