Long before ceiling fans and central air, people kept cool with a flick of the wrist. The hand fan is one of humanity’s oldest comforts, and its history stretches from royal courts to small-town church pews. Even today, on a hot afternoon at an outdoor wedding or a ballgame in July, there is something pleasing about the slow, rhythmic sweep of a fan.
Fans of the ancient world
In ancient Egypt, large fans made of feathers on long handles were held by attendants to cool royalty and to mark their status. Fans were found among the treasures in the tomb of Tutankhamun, including one with a gold handle that once held ostrich feathers. Ancient China had rigid fans of silk, bamboo and feathers, and the round silk fan became a classic object of art, often painted with landscapes, flowers or poetry.
The folding fan and its travels
The folding fan, which opens like a wing and closes into a slim baton, is generally thought to have developed in Japan, where early versions were made of thin strips of wood. It spread to China and later, through trade, to Europe. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fans had become essential fashion accessories in European society, made from painted paper, silk, lace, ivory and mother-of-pearl.
Victorian booklets claimed to decode a secret language of the fan, in which the way a fan was held or moved sent messages across a crowded room. How often anyone actually used such signals is doubtful, but the idea captures the fan’s place in social life as much more than a cooling device.
The church fan of the South
In the American South, the most familiar fan is far humbler: a piece of printed cardboard stapled to a flat wooden stick. Before air conditioning, these fans were a fixture in church pews, often printed with a religious image on one side and an advertisement for a local funeral home or business on the other. On a Sunday morning in August, a whole congregation might be fanning in slow waves during the sermon. Many people still keep one tucked in a drawer, as much for memory as for cooling.
Scented fans have their own tradition. Fans made from thin slats of sandalwood, common in parts of Asia, release a soft, woody fragrance with every stroke, combining cool air and scent in a single gesture.
The quiet pleasure of fanning
A hand fan does not lower the air temperature, but the breeze it creates helps sweat evaporate from your skin, which is why it feels cooler. There is more to it than physics, though. The steady back-and-forth has a calming rhythm, a little like rocking in a porch chair. It slows you down.
- Keep a folding fan in your bag for outdoor events, hot waiting rooms and summer services.
- Try fanning slowly in time with your breath: one sweep as you breathe in, another as you breathe out.
- With children, fold a sheet of paper back and forth into an accordion, pinch one end and decorate it together.
- Look for fans made from natural materials, such as paper, bamboo or wood, that will last for years.
In an age of thermostats, the hand fan may seem old-fashioned. But on a sticky Georgia afternoon, it remains one of the most graceful ways to make the heat a little more bearable, one gentle stroke at a time.