Fan Friday: Monogram Fans

My latest hand fan acquisitions are a couple of monogram fans from the 1890s. These were a fad, and were kind of like scrapbooking. Young women, mostly teens and early twenties, would paste monograms, names and other souvenir markings from stationary onto large blank imported Asian hand fans.

The fans I purchased came from an estate sale in New York. The red fan is paper and completely full on both sides. It probably has the name of the original owner on the guardstick.

 

Probably the original owner, who collected the monograms.

1890s fans are typically quite large, these are at least 11 inches closed, 20 inches open.

The owner of the black fan wasn't as much of a scrapbooker as Rosa. I've seen similar monogrammed styles on wood brise fans but the fad doesn't seem to have extend far into the 1900s.

I bought this monogram fan because it is the only one I've seen with my undergrad alma mater, Tufts University; still a male only college in the 1890s, Jackson College was the women's school.