COVE

The fan titled “The Ladies Travelling Fan, of England and Wales” currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection was manufactured in the year 1788 crafted and published by Thomas Balster, a print publisher and fan maker from the United Kingdom. This object, which is an unfinished fan mount, is a print of all the rivers, counties, roads and markets of England and Wales at the time, as well as some countries that surround them. The fan leaf has intricate and colourful soft-ground etchings, which makes the whole map, and it is coloured by hand. The fan mount is 22 centimetres in height and 45 centimetres in width, an average length for a fan. In the eighteenth century, with the developments of technology, printed fans were cheaper to manufacture, allowing England to lead the way in the sale and export of printed souvenir fans (The Victoria and Albert Museum). While fan maps began to appear slowly at the end of the seventeenth century with the ancestor of the Italian map drawn in the shape of a fan, they became popular during the eighteenth century. These sorts of fans demonstrate the wave of tourism and exploration made possible by the Romantic movement of the time. With the rising popularity of the picturesque and the increased thirst for those sights among the upper-middle and high class, nature was in high demand, facilitating the need for beauty and the development of the picturesque traveller. 

Keywords: Tourism, Exploration, Nature, Fashion