A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

I completely forgot about posting a fashion plate this morning - because yesterday I suddenly found out that the Chapman's grant came through and they could hire me back for another three months to work on cataloguing!  I had to get up at 6:30 again and posting from the queue didn't cross my mind.  (If I could work out how to schedule posts to go up automatically, if that's even possible, that would be so great.) And then I meant to make this apology post with a picture of this adorable Art Nouveau scale and a yarn holder, but of course I left my camera cord at work, because this is me we're talking about!  Instead I will leave you with a few older fan pictures. These two are both from the 1910s.  The first is one of the very popular Neo-neoclassical fans which I love; the second is an advertising fan from Coney Island. An 1880s fan with mother-of-pearl sticks and a heavy silk leaf, printed with an eighteenth century woman in a sacque.  Lovely sil...

In the vein of the Fashion Historian and the Undressing the Fashionable Myth Symposium (I was a little shocked that mine came up as the first hit, is it a personalized search result?) , I'd like to take a look at the concept of "the language of fans". It's very easy to find websites talking about the language of fans .  It seems to be common knowledge that fashionable women across Europe in the eighteenth century had a ritualized system of fan signals, mainly to communicate with a lover or a suitor they were spurning.  Personally, I've always wondered about it - because it seems like anyone not paying strict attention to their hands would find themselves sending embarrassing messages constantly.  Well, today at my internship I was writing an essay on the history of the folding fan, and I took some time to look into the matter.