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Folding fan: M.139-1985

Object information

Current Location: In storage

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown

Entities

Categories

Description

Double paper leaf painted with a Chinese fan seller with a boy attendant standing among flowering plants and trees; ivory sticks and guards.

Double paper leaf, painted in polychrome bdoy colour. Ivory sticks and guards (11 + 2), the sticks pierced, painted and gilt; the guards, carved, pierced, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and strengthened with tortoiseshell (?) next to the rivet. The front is decorated with a Chinoiserie scene showing a fan seller attended by a boy shading him with a parasol, standing among rocks and flowering shrubs. On the reverse, a floral spray painted in pale purple, yellow, and green. The sticks are pierced with three different designs. The outer two and the central two are undecorated. The others on the left are painted with a medallion enclosing a bird on a flowering shrub against a pale brownish-yellow ground, and those on the right with a similar medallion containing flowering plants. Both guards are decorated at the top with a woman holding a basket of flowers beside a pierced screen; in the middle with a lozeng-shaped inlay of mother-of-pearl surrounded by a frame of stylized foliage; and at the bottom with a basket of flowers and foliage perched on a C scroll enclosing pierced foliage (?) with rocaille ornament below.

Notes

History note: Colonel Leonard C. Messel (1872-1953); his daughter Anne, Countess of Rosse (1902-1992)

Legal notes

Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a gift from The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (1985-01-28) by Countess of Rosse, Anne

Dating

18th Century, Mid-Late
Production date: circa AD 1770

School or Style

Chinoiserie

People, subjects and objects depicted

Components of the work

Leaf composed of paint ( bodycolour) paper
Guards composed of tortoise shell ( probably) mother-of-pearl ivory Length 28.8 cm
Sticks composed of ivory

Identification numbers

Accession number: M.139-1985
Primary reference Number: 117724
Old catalogue number: DR 29/381
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Saturday 6 August 2011 Updated: Monday 22 November 2021 Last processed: Friday 8 December 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Applied Arts

Citation for print

This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:

The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Folding fan" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/117724 Accessed: 2024-11-25 07:02:00

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:

{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/117724 |title=Folding fan |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-25 07:02:00|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/objects/object-117724

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