Fan
Brand
Duvelleroy
(French, founded 1827)
1890s
Hand-painted silk gauze and mother of pearl
Gift of the Estate of Elizabeth Arden
Object number69.160.46
In nineteenth-century society, fans functioned as symbolically charged accessories and powerful instruments of seduction. At parties and balls, fans became indispensable performative tools. Women used them to reveal and conceal through orchestrated gestures. As such, the fan was inexorably linked to female sexuality. Fashion historian Valerie Steele has noted that, in eighteenth-century English, the word “fan” was slang for female genitals.
As luxury items, however, fans evoked nostalgia for the aristocratic past. The Parisian fan maker Duvelleroy (established 1827), who supplied Queen Victoria, produced elaborate fans with rococo detailing and imagery appropriated from eighteenth-century paintings.
DescriptionFolding fan in cream silk gauze hand painted with pink and purple carnations, with carved mother-of-pearl Rococo sticks painted with gilt and silverCollections
Exhibitions