Fan owned by ballerina Marie Taglioni (1804-1884) with lacquer sticks and guards with painted paper leaf and silk tassels.

Fan with black lacquer sticks and guards, the guards painted with a Japanese figure against a tree and with geometric designs and foliage and the sticks with a Japanese figure against foliage; the paper leaf is painted on one side with a bird and flowers on a gold ground and, on reverse, Japanese scenes and figures in landscape and interior, inscribed "à ma chère petite Elève / Margureite Rolfe. / Souvenir de / Marie Taglioni / Comtesse Douaière Gilbert de / Voisins / Londres Juillet 1880" Attached on green braid a magenta tassel and a royal blue tassel.

Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest

This is one of several fans in the Cyril Beaumont Collection owned by Marie Taglioni. part of a unique collection of memorabilia and personal effects which evoke the ballerina in the last decades of her life. The manipulation of the fan would have been an integral part of teaching social dance in the 1870s when Taglioni was teaching in London. From the date of the inscription, Taglioni probably gave it to her pupil, Margaret Rolfe, when she left London to live in Marseilles.
A collection of Taglioni memorabilia was amassed by Margaret Rolfe, the granddaughter of Taglioni's closest friend in London, Mrs Boggs Rolfe; she attended Taglioni's dancing classes and received many gifts of Taglioni memorabilia, from Taglioni herself, from her grandmother and from Taglioni's niece, Marguerite Troubetzkoi, after Taglioni's death. She kept these, with a series of related notes, in various boxes and annotated envelopes (filed separately). These she passed to Cyril Beaumont, probably for the London Archives of the Dance (a number of the objects were referred to in "The London Archives of the Dance and some of its Treasures" by Cyril Beaumont, Ballet Annual, first issue, Adam & Charles Black, London, 1947, p110); the Archives never achieved an independent home and part of the collection, including the Taglioni memorabilia, was stored with Cyril Beaumont, where it became inextricably mixed with his own collection and came to the Museum as part of the Cyril Beaumont Bequest.

S.845-2001