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Folding fan: M.161-1985

Object information

Current Location: In storage

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown

Entities

Categories

Description

Vellum painted in body colour with a classical and a chinoiserie scene; ivory sticks and guards

Single vellum leaf painted in polychrome body colour mounted on ivory sticks and guards (17+2), pierced, and carved, the guards also backed with foil. The front of the leaf is decorated with a classical scene set in a landscape with an urn on a pedestal at the left, and arrangements of flowers and foliage at the extreme right and left. A woman with two female attendants standing beside the pedestal, greets a man wearing a laurel wreath and holding a rolled up scroll in his left hand. An attendant stands behind him to the left, and on the right is a woman and an old man kneeling on the ground, holding a rolled scroll in his left hand and stretching out his left towards the man. The reverse has a chinoiserie scene showing a small boy taking a teapot and cup on a tray to a Chinese lady holding a screen fan, who sits on the left of him. On either side of the figures there are shrubs with black stems and pink flowers. The sticks are carved in the centre with a shaped cartouche carved with two seated figures on the left, and an uncarved area on the right (two sticks may be replacements). On each side there are two differently shaped cartouches, one containing a pair of seated putti, and another cotaining a swan or goose with a background of pierced foliage. The guards are both carved with a figure holding a fan, and on the lower part with a pierced motif of a small Chinese building

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

People, subjects and objects depicted

Components of the work

Leaf composed of vellum (skin) ( check) bodycolour
Guards composed of foil Length 26.6 cm
Sticks composed of ivory

References and bibliographic entries

Identification numbers

Accession number: M.161-1985
Primary reference Number: 117746
Old catalogue number: DR 25/330
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Saturday 6 August 2011 Updated: Tuesday 25 February 2020 Last processed: Tuesday 13 June 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/117746 Accessed: 2024-12-22 13:30:25

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/117746 |title=Folding fan |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 13:30:25|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-117746

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