4. As can be seen, sticks are missing, and the remaining sticks were a splendid luxury dinner for so-called
Dermestidae or carpet beetles or, more accurate, their larvae. The fact that the blades are extremely thin
and flexible (almost like celluloid), smoothly coloured and the degree of damage makes me believe that they
are genuine tortoise-shell sticks (and not tainted horn).
5. A hopeless case?
Well, for restauration fairly so.
But reconstruction? Just to provide an idea how it may have looked like in better days?
Let’s try.
1. Cleaning: cotton swabs and distilled water and patience!
2. Stabilising: the insects left little from some of the sticks – supporting them with a transparent plastic
prevents them form breaking.
3. Retouching the colour:This is usually a critical point as it is an intervention not all consider correct. But
here, honestly, no harm can be done…
4. Finding a ribbon that fits the size of the slits and the colour scheme. At the beginning of the 19th century,
some bright colours were used, like the rests of the blue on the sticks in the form of feathers show.They
are additionally decorated with golden aureoles.Therefore, a blue, gold or yellow ribbon would do the trick.
9. Lower part of guard,
to be glued in a first
step
Horribly dirty sticks, they
Need urgent cleaning
Brittle leaf, needs “rehydration”
Use a small, warm damp towel, fold it so that
the damp does not directly touch the fan; put
it BELOW the fan, revers side on the towel and
press on it and put as a weight a dry towel on it.
If you turn the fan and put the damp towel on
top (which I did the first time), the colour of the
obverse may stick to the surface below.
Cotton swabs + distilled water+
patience
Usually, you would use a reversible ph-neutral glue;
I decided in this case to use “super glue” as it was no
Restauration but a “save-the-fan” action
Pink background below mica (already cleaned)
10. Gluing leaf together and adding missing paper parts:
1. Before ever thinking of gluing leaf pieces together, put in a provisional rivet to hold the sticks
together – and look out that all upper and lower border are at the same level!!! A half opened paper
clip will do the trick.
2. Use a self-adhesive hinging tissue of archival quality (ph-neutral) to glue the pieces together.
Make sure that the rehydrated leaf is relatively flat, without wrinkles. If not, repeat the damp
towel procedure (but be sure it is not moist or wet!)
3. If there is tissue/paper missing, use paper from a similar old fan or, if this is not available,
use Kraft paper (brown wrapping paper). I found it better and easier to handle than special
Japanese papers.
4. See if you need to retouch the blank parts where the missing paper gap was. Use daylight for
any retouching (I use water colours for retouching).
11. Retouched Kraft paper
Not ideal Japanese paper,
retouchedRetouched Kraft paper
Improvised rivet of silver wire and a transparent Murano glass pearl
12.
13. This fan was in a slightly better state so that I planned to restore it – only to find out that one
fold was missing. But the sticks were all there, the rivet and thumb in order.Therefore, my
“reconstruction” was reduced to the one fold of the fan.
This type of fan is often labelled “Chinoiserie” and often it is.
In this case, I am pretty sure that it is genuine Chinese.This is the “circumstantial evidence”
for the assumption:
1. The sticks are beautiful lacquer work, depicting a 4-clawed dragon (or even two).
2. Sticks include MOP inlays.These were also used in Europe but the overall quality is very high.
3. Now this could mean that the sticks were imported but the leaf could still be made in Europe. BUT
4. The paper has a MOP shimmer which is unusual in Europe
5. The leaf has a rather unattractive scene: a shepherd in a yellow coat is shown with his 2 sons and 2
sheep.What looks like two round fixed fans are actually some sort of Chinese distaff, the bluish-white
heaps around are wool. And the bluish object in the centre that might be a lantern is rather a
“swift”: A swift is used to hold the skein of yarn while it is wound onto bobbins or spools, or even
wound into a ball.The faces of the three figures are distinctlyAsian, in particular compared to
Chinoiserie faces:
14. “Chinese” faces left and “Chinoiserie” faces right: compare also the hanging moustache left and right
15. Extremely dirty sticks; Guard and first stick
Are already cleaned; in addition to cotton
Swabs, distilled water + patience, I used micro-
crystalline wax polish for finishing the lustre of the
Lacquer.
The leaf was split at several instances, crumpled
and dry; and one fold was missing: I found a similar
paper of a Japanese fan of more or less the period
which I finally used for the “reconstruction” part.
16. When looking at the revers, I found a commercial stamp, a European hand writing but also some
Pencilled signs that look like a Chinese note:
Chinese pencil note
new old restauration
