G. Woolliscroft Rhead

“ This delicate toy, this airy creation of gauze, ivory, and paint, frail and fragile almost as the flowers kissed by Aurora’s son, endowed apparently with the gift of perpetual youth, may claim a lineage older than the Pyramids; having its origin and being in the infancy of the world, before the birth of history, in that golden age when life was a perpetual summer, and care was not, when all was concord and harmony, and old age, long protracted, was dissolved in a serene slumber, and wafted to the mansions of the gods, the regions of eternal love and enjoyment. ”

“ These two fans, the winnowing-fan and the fire-fan, minister to the two most pressing of man’s necessities—to the first of his physical necessities, his daily bread, and to his chief mental necessity, the attainment of the bread of life; the fire-fan keeping alive the flame sacred to the great goddess who is the mother of all things, mistress of the elements, giver of the golden grain, which, when ripened, is separated from the chaff by the winnowing-fan ”

“ There is also a manner of dressing and of wearing, a certain elegance that distinguishes people of taste from the vulgar, which gives each portion of the dress its due importance, and imparts a harmony to the whole, as in the composition of a picture, which weaves every detail into one design and impresses the beholder as a masterpiece. ”

“ We have seen how the good citizens of Dieppe celebrated the joyful occasion of the birth of the dauphin by the gift to the queen-mother of a precious fan of carved ivory. On the more humble printed fan, Immortality, amid a great concourse of people, with fireworks and illuminations in the background, presents the royal infant on a cushion, to kneeling, admiring, and devoted France, who offers a basket of hearts. ”

“ The fan is in the hands of every one, from the merest baby to the big toreador, who employs it as a means of exciting the ire of his bovine adversary. It serves as convenient screen for the dark-eyed beauty, who, seated in the balcony in the still evening, listens eagerly to the impassioned serenade beneath.
At the theatre, says Blondel, nothing is more curious than the manipulation of these instruments, playing with the expressive grace which is a silent flirtation. ”

“ Goldsmith, in a short essay "on the ladies' passion for levelling all distinction of dress," says: "Foreigners observe that there are no ladies in the world more beautiful or more ill-dressed than those of England. Our countrywomen have been compared to those pictures where the face is the work of a Raphael, but the draperies thrown out by some empty pretender, destitute of taste, and entirely unacquainted with design." ”

“ In the dressing of the hair, as in costume generally, the lowest depth of the commonplace has been reached during the nineteenth century. It is, however, extremely dangerous to indulge in any kind of sweeping generalities with respect to our own epoch; we are either, from long habit and custom, prejudiced in favour of a particular régime, or we are afflicted with that contempt which is born of a too great familiarity. ”

“ Has not Gay told how the master Cupid traced out the lines, conceived the shape, converted his arrows into sticks, and from their Pg 3barbed points, softened by love’s flame, forged the pin? Is not the fan one of the chief weapons in the armoury of the Love-God? Is it not the rampart from behind which the fiercest fire of love’s artillery is directed? Nay, is it not in very truth the sceptre of the Love-God? Did not the Greeks early recognise this fact by placing the plumed fan in the hands of Eros himself? The fan is at once the creation of Amor and the chief ensign of his sovereignty! ”

“ When a man of rank makes his entrée into a circle distinguished for taste and elegance, and the usual compliments have passed on both sides, he will discover that his coat will attract only a slight degree of attention, but that the most critical and scrutinising examination will be made on the set of his Cravat. Should this unfortunately not be correctly and elegantly put on—no further notice will be taken of him; whether his coat be of the reigning fashion or not will be unnoticed by the assembly—all eyes will be occupied in examining the folds of the fatal Cravat. ”

“ Boucher, friend and servant of La Pompadour, ‘with her fan that breaks through halberds,’97 has been styled, with more or less semblance to truth, the Anacreon of painters. His convention is of an entirely different order to that of Watteau and his school; but if his method and style is more artificial, it is because life and manners have become less sincere, and because he is true to his belief that ‘Nature wanted harmony and seduction’; he yields nothing to his predecessors in artistic power, he is completely master of his technique, and understands exactly the measure of his gifts. ”

“ Bounteous Nature, however, always kind, who never withholds a good without affording ample compensation, has endowed man with that fertile brain and cunning hand whereby he may convert hide into leather, wool of sheep into cloth, web of worm into silk, flax and cotton into linen of various kinds, and so restore{20} that balance of endowment without which man would be at the mercy of every wind that blew. ”

“ He was a man of singular gifts, a modern of the moderns, whose work, though doubtless derived from that of a past age, would have been impossible at any other epoch than our own. What Conder undoubtedly possessed, and in a very high degree, was that subtle quality which for lack of a better word we call style, a quality not easy of definition, but readily felt. It would be difficult to say what style is, it is far easier to say what it is not; it is not for example, design; a man may possess considerable power of design without much perception of style ”

“ The people who are "in the fashion" are the sheep. "Bell-wether takes the leap and they all jump over." In other words, there can be no really beautiful dress unless the spirit of individualism is fostered. Dress should "express" the wearer and provide an index as to character. Indeed, it does, as the spectacle of a woman or a man following blindly the dictates of fashion is sufficient evidence that he or she possesses no character at all. ”

“ The Greek ideal of the foot is the true one. The Greeks rightly regarded the foot as an undeveloped hand, and they endeavoured in their sculpture to impart that hand-like character to their feet. One has only to notice the flexible toes of new-born and young babies, in order to perceive the reasonableness of this position. The Greeks in their sculpture made a distinct division between the great toe and the rest of the toes, as between the thumb and the fingers of the hand—the three toes well forward in a bunch ”

“ As the climax, however, of costly magnificence,’ continues this writer, ‘I will conclude with a description of the fan of the Duchess of York, who, shortly after her arrival in England, displayed a pleated fan entirely of diamonds, with an ivory stick pierced and set with diamonds in a mosaic pattern; the outside ones were set with a single row of diamonds, whilst very large brilliants fastened the fan at the bottom.’
The eighteenth century was indeed, par excellence, the era of the fan, which was to be seen in the hands of every woman, from princess to peasant. ”

“ There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a Fan. There is the angry Flutter, the modest Flutter, the timorous Flutter, the confused Flutter, the merry Flutter, and the amorous Flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the Fan; insomuch that if I only see the Fan of a disciplined Lady I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. ”

“ The sleeves are long and ample, the edges serrated in the form of leaves. The long flowing embroidered mantle is fastened by a gold fibula at the throat. Her flaxen hair falls in two long double plaits in front of her person, reaching almost to the ground; the plaits being first bound singly by a dark ribbon, and each pair bound together by a lighter ribbon. A thin gauze veil covers the head, which is surmounted by a crown of exquisite workmanship.
GREEK FIGURE.
From Hope's "Costume of the Ancients." ”

“ Fair and delicate though these creations of Eastern ingenuity may be, the genius of Oriental imagery and fancy has discovered for us a still more delicate and effective instrument—a Sanskrit poet recounts a graceful fable of a princess of extreme beauty, who, although constantly attending and fanning the divine fire with a view to increasing the prosperity of her father, never succeeded in producing a flame save by the breath of her charming lips. ”

“ The earliest made-up garment, that in which the art of the tailor was called into play, was doubtless a simple bag, more or less closely fitting to the body and of varying length, with holes for the arms and an opening for the neck. Such a primitive garment has been worn in varying forms at all periods of the world's history, and is in use at the present time in the form of the ordinary singlet. The modern singlet is, in fact, the simple, primeval type of the tunic. ”

“ There is absolutely no reason why a hat of a particular density, or even of a particular shape, should be necessary to occasions of high ceremonial.{208} Moreover, in this connection it may be very pertinently asked, Is artistic invention so utterly dead that it cannot devise a head-gear which shall fit in with its surroundings on such occasions as call for more dignity and impressiveness in the matter of costume? ”

“ The uses of the Fan? They are legion!—They record for us public events, military, political, civil; they tell us our fortunes; instruct us in Botany, in Heraldry, in tricks with cards; they propound conundrums; take us to the theatre, to bull-fights, to church, to the first balloon ascent; and to Mr. Thomas Osborne’s Duck-hunting! ”

“ We trust we have shown that, in the words of Sir George Birdwood, there is perhaps more in a fan than was dreamt of in Johnson’s matter-of-fact definition:—‘An instrument used by ladies to move the air and cool themselves.’
What, then, of the future? May we reasonably look forward in this twentieth century for a renaissance of the fan; for a re-attainment, if not of its past spiritual significance, at least of something of its artistic possibilities?
The future is full of hope; we have turned our backs upon the bad old nineteenth century, with its manifold outrages upon the æsthetic sense ”

“ Nature, ever bounteous, provides us gratis, without any patent dues, with an instrument—the human hand—the most exquisitely delicate and complicated machine known to us; this instrument is directed by a force—the human mind—still more subtle, if possible, in the delicacy of its operations. In place of this, M. Alphonse Baude, in his wisdom, offers us his conglomeration of wheels, axles, metal bolts, and screws! The intelligent fan-lover will therefore note this date, and carefully examine any fan sticks made subsequent to it. ”

“ It will be convenient, at this juncture, to describe in detail the various elements composing this fan-type which has easily distanced all others in the affections of the fair—a triumph so absolute and complete, that to ninety-nine women out of every hundred the idea of a fan is an instrument which may be folded. ”

“ Fashion hastened to make the toy worthy of figuring in grand adornment; the ordinary wood of the stick was replaced by other supports of a more precious material, with incrustations of gold, silver, enamel, and jewels. More capable artists were employed for the execution of the mounts; the éventaillistes learnt from the Italians to derive their inspiration from the great masters of their school. The decoration of the fan-leaves, therefore, acquired something of the suavity, graciousness, and courtliness associated with the work of the painters of the Grand Siècle. ”

“ This introduction of the folding-fan into Europe marks the beginning of a new era of the fan’s history, as, although both Chinese and Japanese fans possess qualities which are absolutely individual and unique, yet it must be confessed that the fan, in the hands of European artists, its early Oriental influence notwithstanding, ultimately developed a character and style quite its own, and reflecting the artistic conditions of its epoch and surroundings. ”

“ In the exhibition of the Fanmakers’ Company at Drapers’ Hall in 1890, a ‘butterfly fan’ appeared. Two large gauze wings, speckled and veined to imitate a gigantic insect, form the fan, the body represented by the handle; upon pressing a button or spring, the wings are set in motion, and, by their fluttering, fan the bearer. ”