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 fan fully open.

At the height of the Victorian era, a special type of sign language was developed that used a fan to communicate. There are thirty-two different emotes, 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. “Woman’s World,” published in 1889, proclaimed that if a woman “could not wield 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 notes that “The eyes of the Spanish ladies gave them unfair help in the language of the fan”, as they were more adept at “eyeing and flapping”, a decided disadvantage to 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 infinite 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 language of the fan became so popular. Christies’ auction house in South Kensington, England, auctions off more than 1,000 fans a year.

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

Hand painted 18th century fans are quite rare and can sell for thousands of dollars, but there are many elegant 19th century printed fans that can still be purchased for around a hundred dollars. These later, simpler fans may be made of less inexpensive materials such as guards, sticks, and celluloid or bamboo 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 usually printed using a process called chromolithography, they were colorful commemoratives. People who collect exhibition memorabilia would also want this type of fan, and this increases its value. A souvenir fan from the 1889 Paris Exposition sold earlier this year at Kodner Galleries for $750.00.

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