Fans: Myth, Style and Dates

 

Nothing makes a Quilt History Know-It-All more indignant than a myth repeated.

See the Six Know It Alls discuss Quilt Myths in this episode:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/quiltmythsbusted

And myths repeated:

"Handed down from colonial days the Friendship Fan...."

From the Laura Wheeler syndicate in the 1930-1970 period.

Just how old is the fan pattern? Accuquilt asked me to do a short history of their new 

Grandmother's Fan cutting die a while ago. 

Short history! Don't get me started.

The earliest published pattern found so far is 1885 in

Peterson's Magazine

Was Jane Weaver recording what she saw going on in needlework

or inventing a trend?

1882-1883, Nebraska's Sheldon Museum 

Anne Elizabeth Bascom North (1844-1923) Shoreham, Vermont

I went through the date-inscribed quilt files and the above is the earliest dated fan quilt I've found---more than a century after the Colonial period, which one can consider closed in 1776 when we declared our independence.

1886 Colonial Williamsburg

Anna Eliza Blackwell Clark, Maryland

The fan seems to have developed as a more controlled version of the Crazy quilt that became a nationwide fad in the early 1880s. Fans made good use of the same silk factory cutaways and offered many opportunities for the embroidery so popular after 1880.

1891

The style had rather strict rules: silks and mixed fabrics, beginning in the 1880s 

when silk scraps were inexpensively available.

1893, Kentucky, National Museum of American History

The 1890s may have been the highpoint of the embroidered fan.

1894, Ima Frank Ritchie, Virginia

Also stitched of wools, lavished with the same kinds

of embroidery.

Black backgrounds a design necessity

Ethel, 1897

1896

Silk became scarce as world politics shut down Chinese imports. And the lavish embroidery lost some of the lavishness.

1898 in wools

1901-1902 West Virginia Project

After the turn of the 20th century we note a change in fabrics: Cottons---prints and woven pattern.

Yet embellished with embroidery.

1903 Columbia, Pennsylvania

1903, West Virginia project

Cretonnes and other cotton prints---embroidery and background

 according to the old aesthetic.

What about a new aesthetic?

A glimpse....

Tan probably once green or blue.

1905, Four fans make a wheel.

 This arrangement became increasing popular in the oughts.

1901, Alida Shave.

Fan has been forgotten, it's a wheel.

And then we go back to the Anna Tuels quilt in the Wadsworth

Athenaeum Collection, but it's not a fan; it's a wheel.

1905

1906 Mary Alma Turner, 8 years old

1910, Della Van Houghton Chase, Burlington, Michigan Project

Tradition persists.

1910

1906-1911 Arizona Project.

3 spokes per fan.

1912, Lizzie Miller, born about 1844, 

may have thought the style cutting-edge modern.

1912 sampler of embroidered style

About this time Joseph Doyle & Company published a pattern

for "Grandmother's Fan," alluding to the old-fashionedness of the design.

In 1910 your grandma might have made one 25 years ago.

Doyle sold silk remnants, a continuation of grandmother's

sense of style.

1913 fan with a fancier edge, requiring applique

1918--- a throwback.

Did she see these as butterflies?

1929, pastels in fashion, wools appliqued to a crazy background.

1931

Finally, a new aesthetic. Pastels prints and plains, modern embroidery style

and is that the new packaged bias tape finishing out each fan/plate?

1932-1933 Oklahoma

And yet....in velvets

1949, Joan Marx  

The new aesthetic. A love of prints---no embroidery necessary.

Fans like this were among the most popular designs in the mid-20th-century

but apparently few were date-inscribed.

Violet Moore Higgins illustration

A medieval princess?

Remember: Fans are NOT a Colonial pattern.

Or medieval.

Fanciful tales.