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Design
Unknown - Enlarge image
Design
- Place of origin:
Paris, France (made)
- Date:
05/01/1788 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Pencil and pen and ink and watercolour on paper
- Credit Line:
Purchased with the assistance of Wartski Limited
- Museum number:
E.897:324-1988
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E, case CUP, shelf 5, box A
This is a design for a fan shown open. It has eight different patterns of stick decoration from which the client could choose. There is a plain mount carrying the letter 'M' in an oval. This initial is similar to the cipher of Marie Antoinette, Queen consort of France (1770-1793). Fans were fashionable, personal accessories carried by women as part of dress. The intended weight of the fan is given as six ounces which was important information for the woman who would hold it. The design was drawn by an anonymous designer on the 5th of January, 1788.
The design is inscribed with the price of the fan which was breathtakingly expensive at '6 cent livre' or six hundred livres. In comparison, Jean Bertos, a cook-shop employee who died in 1784, left clothes worth 38 livres which shows how such a fan cost five hundred and sixty-two more livres than the shop assistant's entire wardrobe.
There is a close relationship between the contents of the album and known work by three Parisian goldsmiths, Jean Ducrollay (1710-1787), Pierre- François Drais (active 1761-1788), and Charles Ouizille (1744-1830) whose names appear on the first page of the album. This suggests that all the designs emanate from their workshops. Drais worked for the Court at Versailles as jeweller to both King Louis XV and Louis XVI. Ouizille worked in this capacity for Louis XVI. Most of the material dates from the period 1755-90.
