Flipping fan failure

Even if I could carry a tune in a bucket, I would never make it as an opera diva. Sad, but true--I can't flick open and flutter my folding fan in a flirtatious manner. Rats. I can't flick it open at all. I'll never sing the title role of Bizet's "Carmen" or flutter in "Turandot".

We had a school demonstration of Tai Chi with fans this week. Tai Chi is a slow, soft martial art best known for relaxation, meditation, and range-of-motion exercise. I'd never seen Tai Chi done with music and fans before. The children were anxious to get their hands on one of the fans. Some of them were instantly able to mimic the motion required to open a fan with an impressive, loud snap.

When it was my turn, I was hopeless. "It is easy," the Tai Chi master said, "just like using chopsticks!" Go ahead and rub it in. I'm just as inept with chopsticks as I am with a curling iron.

My great aunt gave me a fan decades ago. I got it out of the cupboard and tried to get a grip on the fan flip technique. The tricks seem to be in flicking down to open up, and letting gravity do the work.



Some interesting links about fans:

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Language of Fans--While use of this language is a forgotten art, when we see it in a painting or opera the meaning is usually obvious.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Fabulous Fans

Feeling warm? Take a little mental break and fan your imagination with the current exhibit of Eighteenth century painted fans on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. The twenty-five elaborate fans are part of a collection given the museum by Wendy Reves.

Painted by primarily female artisans looking at an example in front of them, the watercolor and gouache* images include political, biblical, bucolic, wedding, mythological, and travel scenes of great beauty and detail. Fan leaves are of silk, vellum, or parchment. Fan sticks of carved ivory were either imported from India and China, or made by the guild of comb makers and inlayers in Europe. The fan sticks are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, brass, glass or rock crystal, paste gems, tortoiseshell and silver foil. Clearly, these aren't the fans of simple folk. The pamphlet that accompanies the exhibit says a fan like this cost five to ten times the amount of a linen shirt.

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection
June 17–October 14, 2007 Focus Gallery II

My own fan collection consists of one given me by my Nebraska great aunt, and probably about ninety years old. Its sticks are painted wood. I can't tell what kind of paper the leaf is made of, but it has an opalescent sheen. The design is painted or printed with watercolors and metallic paints.



*Gouache is similar to watercolor, but with chalk or gum added to the mixture of ground pigment and water, making it more opaque. Allegedly easier to control than watercolor, it has a livelier look than tempera. Tempera is also basically ground pigment and water with an egg or egg yolk addition to bind it together. Poster paint is tempera with a binding of gum Arabic or glue instead of egg. Casein, a milk protein, can also be used as a binding. The definitions and boundaries between these paint types are variable.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder