Folding fan: M.139-1985

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown

Entities

• Folding fan

Categories

• Fans

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.