Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-09-19 09:45 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-09-19 09:45 pm
Entry tags:
Possibly-dodgy info on fan-making!
This weekend is the Journées du Patrimoine, where historically and culturally important buildings all over France (and a good part of the rest of Europe, apparently) are opened to the public. I know I should've done something cool and unique that wasn't open the rest of the year, but Smith already got us guided tours of the Hôtel de Ville and the Assemblée Nationale, which are probably the only things I would've been interested in that aren't normally open to the public. So instead I went to the Musée de l'Eventail, which is cute and tucked away in an apartment building and still contains an active fan-making workshop. I don't know if they normally give guided tours or if it was just for this weekend, but we did indeed get a guided tour, with lots of technical vocabulary in French that I'm not going to be able to translate very well.
The biggest thing I took away from it is that "éventailliste" is actually ridiculously un-specific, because there are lots of subspecialties within the trade. There's the work of making the supports/sticks/whatever you want to call them, out of wood or ivory or mother-of-pearl or whatever: shaping, carving, decorating, punching tiny holes in very delicate mother-of-pearl to make those amazing lacy-looking brisé fans. I got the impression that that part was generally a masculine profession. Then you have the work of painting the leaf (either cloth or paper), which I surmise was fairly gender-neutral. Then you have the decoration work that was almost exclusively reserved for women: lacemaking, embroidery, sequins, etc. You also have someone overseeing the whole operation to make sure everything fits and that no faces are going to be painted onto a fold, and finally the work of folding and mounting the paper leaf onto the panels. I am not sure which of these roles the word "éventailliste" refers to, because generally you'd have a bunch of people in an atelier doing various tasks, not a single person assembling entire fans one by one.
Fans went out of fashion in the beginning of the 19th century (though you did sometimes see small ones), and didn't really make a comeback until 1830. There were the usual "folded paper mounted on panels with a scene painted on it" fans that were popular in the 18th century, although in the 19th century themes from everyday bourgeois life (births, deaths, marriages, children) were much more popular than the traditional pastoral scenes. There was also a huge resurgence in brisé fans, where the body of the fan is made up of the panels themselves instead of painted folded paper/cloth. These could get very elaborate and were incredibly arduous to make.
These are mostly impressions--especially about the trade of fanmaking itself--so if anyone has more concrete information, please share. XD
The biggest thing I took away from it is that "éventailliste" is actually ridiculously un-specific, because there are lots of subspecialties within the trade. There's the work of making the supports/sticks/whatever you want to call them, out of wood or ivory or mother-of-pearl or whatever: shaping, carving, decorating, punching tiny holes in very delicate mother-of-pearl to make those amazing lacy-looking brisé fans. I got the impression that that part was generally a masculine profession. Then you have the work of painting the leaf (either cloth or paper), which I surmise was fairly gender-neutral. Then you have the decoration work that was almost exclusively reserved for women: lacemaking, embroidery, sequins, etc. You also have someone overseeing the whole operation to make sure everything fits and that no faces are going to be painted onto a fold, and finally the work of folding and mounting the paper leaf onto the panels. I am not sure which of these roles the word "éventailliste" refers to, because generally you'd have a bunch of people in an atelier doing various tasks, not a single person assembling entire fans one by one.
Fans went out of fashion in the beginning of the 19th century (though you did sometimes see small ones), and didn't really make a comeback until 1830. There were the usual "folded paper mounted on panels with a scene painted on it" fans that were popular in the 18th century, although in the 19th century themes from everyday bourgeois life (births, deaths, marriages, children) were much more popular than the traditional pastoral scenes. There was also a huge resurgence in brisé fans, where the body of the fan is made up of the panels themselves instead of painted folded paper/cloth. These could get very elaborate and were incredibly arduous to make.
These are mostly impressions--especially about the trade of fanmaking itself--so if anyone has more concrete information, please share. XD
no subject
So a correction and a few additions:
LEAF fans were out of fashion from roughly 1800-1830 - everything was brisé until that point. The montures (guards/sticks) were carved in the Oise and only decorated in Paris. The posh Maison Duvelleroy opened in Paris in 1827 - it was THE place from which you wanted to get your fans if you could afford it for a good century. Fanmaking is a luxury export business - it isn't just Duvelleroy fans in the hands of all European aristocracy but Paris was a definite centre of fanmaking just as it was for all sort of other luxury items. There's also low-end knockoffs, just like in every other luxury business.
If talking leaves, designs were usually printed then coloured rather than hand drawn, even on silk. apparently vellum was a possibility for the leaf material as well, according to my notes. Lace not in anything approaching this period, I don't think, and the lace would be tatted specifically into shape by a lacemaker, wouldn't it? (For it to be otherwise strikes me as "bwuh?")
As for decor, you absolutely do not have pictures of flowers on your fan as the sole design in this period unless they are part of the carving pattern in a brisé fan. Designs are always scenes: history, allegory, political, mythological, even the occasional landscape with a country house. and of course these go in and out of fashion. There was one on display at that time that was gilt and mother of pearl brisé with an image of ladies dancing in a garden. (sadly, no photographs and I can't draw, so I barely remember now what it looked like, but with that kind of description, it was definitely stylised rather than a theme of bourgeois life.) You'll sometimes see some of these design elements in brisé fans which are carved in such a way that there are medallions into which scenes can be painted. At least there's not much orientalism going on at this period. (i suspect it came back when France invaded Algeria, then you get japonisme.) It's hard to tease out the tastes of the period from roughly 1824-1832 because no one seems to care until 1830, and they *really* want to tell you all about Second Empire styles and tastes because with the growth of transport by rail, you have an expanded market and thus greater scope to talk about the business of fashion.