Antique Hand Painted French Hand Fan, First Empire, c.1800-1815, Blond Tortoise Shell or Horn

I have an entire large crate filled with antique fans. I’ll be adding them as I have time, so mark our site and please come back to see them all. This one is a wonderful and early hand painted beauty, just 6 1/2″ long when closed, and it’s beautifully preserved. I think at some point it has had a new silk ribbon, probably within the last 80-100 years, which is stable and lovely. Each stick is worked with cutaway patterning. It opens to a full 11 1/2″. The transparency of the old carved tortoise shell or perhaps boiled horn sticks is charming, flirty. One can see through the fan.

Very good to excellent condition for age and type. There is no ring, but you can see that the sticks are in fine condition and the hand painted roses are as delicate and lovely as they were more than 200 years ago. Fit for a museum, or a sophisticated collector’s inventory. It did not have a box when I bought it in France many years ago, and I’ve had it in archival tissue for safe storage since. I sometimes lose track of all the beautiful treasures Antiques & Uncommon Treasure has acquired over the decades. Time to downsize.

IMPORTANT NOTE regarding antique tortoise shell or ivory: We are great supporters of protection for endangered species in our modern world. We never buy or sell anything 100 years or newer; we donate to anti-poaching organizations; we don’t hunt; we conserve in ways that impact global warming (we’re totally solar at home), knowing those measures also protect the animals in the wild today. We also recognize the vast cultural history we preserve with our care and reverence for these antique objects, and agree with CITES that objects over 100 years of age have nothing whatsoever to do with species depletion in our current world. 

Our offering exceeds the age limitation of “more than 100 years of age”, and is well within the exemption for CITES regulation. If imported, met the CITES regulation. This item will be handled and shipped from our Utah business, and is not available for shipment internationally, nor within the USA to California, NY, Nevada, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington if it contains ivory, sorry. Please see our small print for more details.