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 compliment in China to invite a friend or distinguished guest to write some sentiment on your fan as a memento of any special occasion, and this practice has continued. A fan that has some celebrity in France was presented by the Chinese ambassador to the comtesse de Clauzel at the coronation of Napoleon I. in 1804. When a site was given in 1635, on an artificial island, for the settlement of Portuguese merchants in Nippo in Japan, the space was laid out in the form of a fan as emblematic of an object agreeable for general use. Men and women of every rank both in China and Japan carry fans, even artisans using them with one hand while working with the other. In China they are often made of carved ivory, the sticks being plates very thin and sometimes carved on both sides, the intervals between the carved parts pierced with astonishing delicacy, and the plates held together by a ribbon. The Japanese make the two outer guards of the stick, which cover the others, occasionally of beaten iron, extremely thin and light, damascened with gold and other metals.

Fans were used by Portuguese ladies in the 14th century, and were well known in England before the close of the reign of Richard II. In France the inventory of Charles V. at the end of the 14th century mentions a folding ivory fan. They were brought into general use in that country by Catherine de’Medici, probably from Italy, then in advance of other countries in all matters of personal luxury. The court ladies of Henry VIII.’s reign in England were used to handling fans. A lady in the “Dance of Death” by Holbein holds a fan. Queen Elizabeth is painted with a round feather fan in her portrait at Gorhambury; and as many as twenty-seven are enumerated in her inventory (1606). Coryat, the English traveller, in 1608 describes them as common in Italy. They also became of general use from that time in Spain. In Italy, France and Spain fans had special conventional uses, and various actions in handling them grew into a code of signals, by which ladies were supposed to convey hints or signals to admirers or to rivals in society. A paper in the Spectator humorously proposes to establish a regular drill for these purposes.

The chief seat of the European manufacture of fans during the 17th century was Paris, where the sticks or frames, whether of wood or ivory, were made, and the decorations painted on mounts of very carefully prepared vellum (incorrectly called chicken skin)—a material stronger and tougher than paper, which breaks at the folds. Paris makers exported fans unpainted to Madrid and other Spanish cities, where they were decorated by native artists. Many were exported complete; of old fans called Spanish a great number were in fact made in France. Louis XIV. issued edicts at various times to regulate the manufacture. Besides fans mounted with parchment, Dutch fans of ivory were imported into Paris, and decorated by the heraldic painters in the process called “Vernis Martin,” after a famous carriage painter and inventor of colourless lac varnish. Fans of this kind belonging to Queen Victoria and the baroness de Rothschild were exhibited in 1870 at Kensington. A fan of the date of 1660, representing sacred subjects, is attributed to Philippe de Champagne, another to Peter Oliver in England in the 17th century. Cano de Arevalo, a Spanish painter of the 17th century, devoted himself to fan painting. Some harsh expressions of Queen Christina to the young ladies of the French court are said to have caused an increased ostentation in the splendour of their fans, which were set with jewels and mounted in gold. Rosalba Carriera was the name of a fan painter of celebrity in the 17th century. Le Brun and Romanelli were much employed during the same period. Klingstet, a Dutch artist, enjoyed a considerable reputation in the latter part of the 17th and the first thirty years of the 18th century.

The revocation of the edict of Nantes drove many fan-makers out of France to Holland and England. The trade in England was well established under the Stuart sovereigns. Petitions were addressed by the fan-makers to Charles II. against the importation of fans from India, and a duty was levied upon such fans in consequence. This importation of Indian fans, according to Savary, extended also to France. During the reign of Louis XV. carved Indian and China fans displaced to some extent those formerly imported from Italy, which had been painted on swanskin parchment prepared with various perfumes.

During the 18th century all the luxurious ornamentation of the day was bestowed on fans as far as they could display it. The sticks were made of mother-of-pearl or ivory, carved with extraordinary skill in France, Italy, England and other countries. They were painted from designs of Boucher, Watteau, Lancret and other “genre” painters; Hébert, Rau, Chevalier, Jean Boquet, Mme. Vérité, are known as fan-painters. These fashions were followed in most countries of Europe, with certain national differences. Taffeta and silk, as well as fine parchment, were used for the mounts. Little circles of glass were let into the stick to be looked through, and small telescopic glasses were sometimes contrived at the pivot of the stick. They were occasionally mounted with the finest point lace. An interesting fan (belonging to Madame de Thiac in France), the work of Le Flamand, was presented by the municipality of Dieppe to Marie Antoinette on the birth of her son the dauphin. From the time of the Revolution the old luxury expended on fans died out. Fine examples ceased to be exported to England and other countries. The painting on them represented scenes or personages connected with political events. At a later period fan mounts were often prints coloured by hand. The events of the day mark the date of many examples found in modern collections. Among the fan-makers of modern days the names of Alexandre, Duvelleroy, Fayet, Vanier became well known in Paris; and the designs of Charles Conder (1868–1909) have brought his name to the front in this art. Painters of distinction often design and paint the mounts, the best designs being figure subjects. A great impulse was given to the manufacture and painting of fans in England after the exhibition which took place at South Kensington in 1870. Modern collections of fans take their date from the emigration of many noble families from France at the time of the Revolution. Such objects were given as souvenirs, and occasionally sold by families in straitened circumstances. A large number of fans of all sorts, principally those of the 18th century, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, &c., have been bequeathed to the South Kensington (Victoria and Albert) Museum.

The sticks of folding fans are called in French brins, the two outer guards panaches, and the mount feuille.

See also Blondel, Histoire des éventails (1875); Octave Uzanne, L’éventail (1882); and especially G. Wooliscroft Rhead, History of the Fan (1909).

 FANCY (a shortened form, dating from the 15th century, of “fantasy,” which is derived through the O. Fr. fantasie, modern fantaisie, from the Latinized form of the Gr. , to show), display, showing forth, as a philosophical term, the presentative power of the mind. The word “fancy” and the older form “fantasy,” which is now chiefly used poetically, was in its early application synonymous with imagination, the mental faculty of creating representations or images of things not present to the senses; it is more usually, in this sense, applied to the lighter forms of the imagination. “Fancy” also commonly means inclination, whim, caprice. The more learned form “phantasy,” as also such words as “phantom” and “phantasm,” is chiefly confined to visionary imaginings.

 FANG , a powerful African people occupying the Gabun district north of the Ogowé river in French Congo. Their name means “men.” They call themselves Panwe, Fanwe and Fan with highly nasalized n. They are a finely-made race of chocolate colour; some few are very dark, but these are of slave origin. They have bright expressive oval faces with prominent cheek-bones. Many of them file their teeth to points. Their hair, which is woolly, is worn by the women long, reaching below the nape of the neck. The men wear it in a variety of shapes, often building it up over a wooden base. The growth of the hair appears abundant, but that on the face is usually removed. Little clothing is worn; the men wear a bark waist-cloth, the women a plantain girdle, sometimes with a bustle of dried grass. A chief wears a leopard’s skin round the shoulders. Both sexes tattoo and paint the body,