The Embroiderer's Garden
Anyone who follows my photostream will know that I am an avid collector of interesting and beautiful objects. Amongst many other things, I love to collect vintage accessories. This includes antique fans. My favourite fans are those from the Victorian and Edwardian era. Fans from these eras are extremely ostentatious and beautiful, but at such advanced age are often very fragile. Such is definitely the case with this fan. This is a Victorian fan of the 1850s made of black silk which has been beautifully hand embroidered with stylised red and purple poppies and blue daisies interwoven with curvaceous leaves in colourful embroidery silks. The fan has been set on hand cut and shaped gilded wooden struts. Potentially embroidered by the woman who originally used this fan as an accessory at a ball or party, the fine workmanship would have promoted this woman as a skilled needlewoman, which in the genteel times of the Nineteenth Century would have been a desirous quality in a jeune fille à marier (a marriageable young woman). Usually being left closed, and kept out of the light, the colours of the embroidery silks are still vibrant, even after one hundred and seventy years.
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 19th of November is “man-made leaves”. I used this fan in last week’s “Smile on Saturday” theme of “part of a human face” where my sitter hid partially behind the fan, so you were given a taste as to what the fan looked like. It seemed a shame to not to use it for this week’s theme and show off its rich and colourful embroideries. I hope you like my choice for the theme, and that it makes you smile.
The Embroiderer's Garden
Anyone who follows my photostream will know that I am an avid collector of interesting and beautiful objects. Amongst many other things, I love to collect vintage accessories. This includes antique fans. My favourite fans are those from the Victorian and Edwardian era. Fans from these eras are extremely ostentatious and beautiful, but at such advanced age are often very fragile. Such is definitely the case with this fan. This is a Victorian fan of the 1850s made of black silk which has been beautifully hand embroidered with stylised red and purple poppies and blue daisies interwoven with curvaceous leaves in colourful embroidery silks. The fan has been set on hand cut and shaped gilded wooden struts. Potentially embroidered by the woman who originally used this fan as an accessory at a ball or party, the fine workmanship would have promoted this woman as a skilled needlewoman, which in the genteel times of the Nineteenth Century would have been a desirous quality in a jeune fille à marier (a marriageable young woman). Usually being left closed, and kept out of the light, the colours of the embroidery silks are still vibrant, even after one hundred and seventy years.
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 19th of November is “man-made leaves”. I used this fan in last week’s “Smile on Saturday” theme of “part of a human face” where my sitter hid partially behind the fan, so you were given a taste as to what the fan looked like. It seemed a shame to not to use it for this week’s theme and show off its rich and colourful embroideries. I hope you like my choice for the theme, and that it makes you smile.