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Company History

The Master's Badge of Office, 1878 and Gold Chain, 1895

Some Livery Companies can date their origins from 'time immemorial', from before 1289 that is, and their beginnings are lost in obscurity. There is no such problem with the Fan Makers almost six hundred years later. There was one threat above all that faced the fan making industry at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth - the importing of foreign fans. From the time of its formation until the common use of fans fell away, roughly by the outbreak of the first world war, the Company fought a rearguard action to keep out foreign competition and to sustain the trade.

The English fan industry in the seventeenth century was poor, badly organised and without recognition. It was political events the other side of the Channel which changed things radically. On 22nd October1685  Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. The Edict, decreed by Henry IV of France and confirmed by his successors, guaranteed the toleration of Protestants in a predominantly Catholic country. Its revocation resulted in some fifty thousand Protestant families leaving France for other European countries with a Protestant tradition, not least England.

They settled for the most part, outside the City, in Spitalfields, Soho, and St Giles. Their skills lay largely in domestic arts and manufacture: silk, crystal glass, jewellery, furniture as well as fan making. Once established in their former trades, they took on native apprentices and work people and flourished, especially in fan making.

It was not long before the unrestricted imports of cheap foreign fans became a cause for worry. An advertisement of 1702 epitomises the problem - "For sale, by the candle, at the Marine Coffee House in Birchin Lane, Forty thousand Fans of sundry sorts". Because of this state of affairs a petition was made to Queen Anne for the grant of a charter which established "The Master, Wardens, Assistants and Society of the Art or Mistery of Fanmakers of London and Westminster and Twenty Miles Round".

In fact this was to be the last Royal Charter granted for the formation of a Livery Company. Thus the Company regards itself as the last of the 'old' Companies. Those which have followed have all been incorporated by the City alone.

The date of the Charter is 19th April 1709, at which time there were between two and three hundred people who had served as apprentices to the said Art and Mistery by the span of seven years' who made application to be Liverymen. Although the early records have been lost, the first extant records date from 1747 and begin at Membership number 839 and the 888th was recorded in 1751, which suggests that fan makers were qualifying from their apprenticeships in the various fan making trades: stick making, fan painting, ribbon weaving and fan making (the one who assembled the efforts of all the others) at an average rate of once a fortnight. It is interesting that the tools displayed on the coat of arms, which was in use by 1739 but not the subject of a Grant of Arms until 1991, are those of the stick maker.

The period from 1750 until the end of the century was the high point of the fan's use as an article of fashion. Even then it was not plain sailing; the Company had to battle against cheap, printed fans. To protect fan painters a duty was imposed on the~ printed leaves. Sadly not many examples survive; the stamp was affixed before the leaf was cut and shaped to fit the sticks and so was lost in the making up.

There had been a duty on imported fans made of wood, leather and feathers as early as 1627 for a time, together with a complete embargo on painted fans. In a Company Minute Book of 1775 there are notes, probably by the Foreign Warden (the Company officer whose duty it was to protect the English trade) summarising the protection currently in force.

In 1779, a Liveryman, Robert Clarke, complained to the Court of Assistants (the governing body of the Company) that "importation of French and foreign fans daily increased" and it was decided that advertisements should be placed in papers and hand bills distributed as part of a campaign to put things right. When the peace of Versailles was concluded in 1783, the Minute Book summarised the commercial provisions of the Treaty and the consequences for Fan Makers.

In spite of the best efforts of the Company, the taste for Continental and especially French fans continued unabated; so much so that at the Great Exhibition in 1851 there were no English fans on show. In the notes to an exhibition at the South Kensington Museum (later the V & A) in 1820, it had already been written, "that there are no English fan makers living except those who make cheap and coarse fans," is substantially correct today.

The Company did not give up and at the instigation of Queen Victoria, organised an exhibition in 1870, again at South Kensington. The Queen offered a prize of £400 for the best fan of 413 examples. In 1878, at Drapers' Hall, under the patronage of Princess Louise, 1284 fans were shown and prize medals in gold, silver and bronze were offered along with cash and the Freedom of the Company, to the winners. In 1889 the event was repeated with sponsorship by newspapers and individuals but only 166 fans were entered. In the following year the Company tried again and achieved an entry of 600 fans but, as had been the case the year before, there was no work of outstanding quality. There was one indication of times to come, through the showing of a mechanical fan, which, in the form of a butterfly, flapped its wings.

In 1897 the Company presented a fan to HM Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. Since then it has become the practice to present a fan to members of the Royal Family to mark a marriage or other special event. Such a gift was made to HM Alexandra on the occasion of her Coronation in 1902. At her Coronation in 1911 HM Queen Mary also accepted a fan which she took to India and used in the Durbar celebrations. HM Queen Elizabeth II has accepted two fans from the Company, the first being on the occasion of her marriage to HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947, when she was presented with an antique fan of Louis XV period. Following her Coronation in 1953, Her Majesty accepted a specially commissioned fan made of ostrich feathers with a tortoise shell mount inlaid with diamonds. The most recent presentation was to Sophie, Countess of Wessex on the occasion of her marriage to The Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. She accepted a special edition of the Company's Millennium Fan and an 18th. Century silk fan mounted on ivory sticks. On each occasion the recipient is invited to sign the leaf of The Royal Autograph Fan, which is one of the Company's most cherished possessions.

The history of the Company this century has seen a closer association with the mechanical fan trade: the use of the fan in heating and in ventilation to begin with and later the use of fans in aircraft engines.

These aspects of the Company's efforts are demonstrated by the association it enjoys with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, founded in 1985, two of whose Presidents have been Liverymen of the Company, and the annual award of prizes in Avionics, Aerodynamics and Fluid Engineering at Cranfield Institute of Technology. The first Master, whose business was the manufacture of mechanical fans, was elected in 1948.

The Company retains its interest in what is its raison d'etre by maintaining and conserving a collection of fans, the most dazzling part of which, is a gift of thirty fans by H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone in 1974. They are outstanding as fans but their provenance as gifts to or from European Royalty makes them unique. The collection numbers some 250 fans in all.

Significant dates in the history of the Fan Makers Company

Copyright © 2001 The Worshipful Company of Fan Makers, Last modified: 29 October, 2001