Description
Vintage Victorian 1840 Carved Painted Feather Fan & Original Box. Please note: vintage clothing and accessories are used items and sold as is. Downsizing a portion of my vintage clothing storage unit. Extremely RARE 1840 hand painted highly decorated fan from Ireland, County Cork. All feather fan with hand painted bird and floral oval frame pattern, small painted silver dark floral and leaf pattern along each side feather. Top of feathers formed into scallops and painted with dark silver paint edging. Top of feathers adorned with downy soft feather trim, a few area's these feathers are sparse due to age. Each stick, not certain what material these are constructed from, possible bone, not ivory. All hand carved and cut with a vine like pattern, see photo, no breaks or cracks. Each stick has silver ornate paper trim along the top and near middle bottom. Gathered at the bottom with a MOP button. Fan is superb condition, and, amazing this has survived all this time!! Measures 9" tall, 17" wide, sticks 1/4" wide. Original RARE hand constructed fan box still with fan. Box in fair to good condition. Top lower portion was torn at one time and was hand sewn together. Hard low gloss paper box, lid and bottom. Top curved part of box has torn away from the edge top, see photo. Bottom box very thick and sturdy. A crease at top side, black age smudging along one side at top lip area. Box still intact with it's original lid cover. Box measures 10" long, larger at the rounded top and narrows for the main stick body of the fan. This is a lovely rare piece for the fan collector. The language of fans was used during balls, dinners and other special occasions. One could hold hands while using the fan to hide secret lovers interests in each other. Women would use the fan to hide their expression while viewing large crowds in a room, if angered by a gentleman a lady would take her fan and put it next to her face and rapidly fan it back and forth, this let the gentleman know she was angered. If a gentlemen approached an unknown lady he had not be introduced to in the proper Victorian fashion and etiquette of the era, a lady would take her fan, close it with a firm SNAP, lay it in her lap and look away. This sent a message to the gentlemen to "stop, do not approach". So, fans were widely used to speak silent messages as well as style. All sales final. NO INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING. Thank you.
