folding fan with box, unknown maker from Japan

Exhibition Label:
“Quilting Time and Space,” Jun-2010, Sooa Im
This Japanese hand-painted folding fan may be an export item for western market or a traveler’s souvenir. When Asian folding fans were first introduced to the West, they served as an expensive fashion item for European royalty and nobility. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, their primary consumers were curious commoners who visited international expositions and became fascinated with the exotic imagery of Asian art. At the left corner of this fan, cranes-a symbol of immortality in the East Asian tradition-are elegantly posed on the riverbank, and at the other corner, pavilions stand on the top of the low hills, evoking the exotic landscape of Asia. The Fan quilt displayed nearby highlights how a folding fan from Asia became part of the nineteenth-century visual culture in the West, particularly in American quilt tradition.