The most punctual enduring case of a fan from China is from a tomb in Hubei and dates to the Warring States Period (475 to 221 BC).
The greater part of the soonest fans that have been found have been from the old Kingdom of Chu where the fan appears to have been more solidly installed into the way of life than anyplace else. These table fan havells come in two classifications; those up to two meters long and intended to be employed by hirelings, and those around 10 to 12 crawls long and are planned for individual use.
The primary composed record of fan shows up in the Han Dynasty and coincidently is composed on a fan. The Han Dynasty additionally observes the sonnet 'Tribute to Bamboo Fans' by Ba Gu. As of now in history fans could be produced using bamboo, ivory or wood - plume fans were especially mainstream in Eastern China.
Anyway it is in the Song Dynasty (960 to 1127) that the fan truly makes its mark as an object of both craftsmanship and culture. While the primary individual to have painted on a fan was apparently Wang Xizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it is in the rule of Song Emperor Huizong that the Imperial Painting Academy was set up and the favored medium was to paint on fans. From the start the majority of the pictures painted on fans were scenes however as the Dynasty went on then they started to tests and paint scenes from nature - in the long run the fan turned into a famous vehicle for calligraphy and verse.
It was in 988 that the principal 'collapsing fans' come to China. They are recorded as originating from Japan as a piece of a tribute being sent to the Emperor. They didn't quickly take off in China as they were viewed as something for the lower classes; this was overwhelmingly an outcome of the way that they couldn't be painted similarly as the huge fixed fans and they didn't expect workers to utilize them so did not have a similar social cachet.
It isn't until the Ming Dynasty that collapsing fans start to turn out to be all the more socially satisfactory. In 'Arbitrary Notes of the Spring Breeze Hall' by Lu Shen there is an account of agents from the South East during the early Ming Dynasty being giggled at essentially in light of the fact that they conveyed collapsing fans. It was the Yongle Emperor who appears to have restored the collapsing fan and who gave them as endowments to favored officers and squires. Gradually they lost their relationship with the lower arranges and supplanted the fixed fan as the fanatic of decision. A large number of these collapsing fans were created in Sichuan and in Suzhou, as indicated by one record over a million collapsing fans were sent from Sichuan to the royal court every year (albeit another, maybe increasingly conceivable record puts it at 10,000). Sichuan specifically was related with silk fans and Suzhou with painted bamboo fans.
Dealt with or fixed fans can be round, elongated, hexagonal, heart-molded, sunflower-formed on any of countless different shapes. The round shapes are typically the most exceptionally respected and loan themselves most effectively to painting. The handles themselves likewise arrive in a tremendous assortment with over a hundred distinct sorts, for example, meager onion, swallowtail, eggplant or butterfly. The states of the handles can be a valuable method for dating a fan. On silk examples can be painted, weaved, weaved, stuck or drawn.
Collapsing fans involve the spread and the casing. Those for men are as a rule around 12 inches in length and those for ladies around 8 inches in length. They can be assembled by the quantity of ribs they have; 12, 14 or 16 are on the whole regular number of ribs.
In workmanship figures regularly connected with fans incorporate Zong Liquan - the Chief of the Daoist Immortals - who conveys the fan as his seal and it is rumored to have powers tp restore the dead, and Huang Xiang who is an image of dutiful devotion as he fanned his dad's bedside on summer evenings. More info read this article