How a craft fanned across the world

Hand-crafted

Sometimes inventions evolve as craft. Fans are perhaps the earliest known human inventions. They must have originated at about the time man moved from under the tree tops to build dwellings. Fans have been used since pre-historic times. The early man might have started using barks of trees and large leaves as fans. As man became more civilised, fans too became more elaborate and artistic. Elegantly designed fans are depicted in the carvings and paintings of many ancient cultures.

Screen fans or fixed palm leaf fans are the earliest known. Some of the earliest surviving fans include ostrich feather fans from Tutankhamen’s tomb (2nd century BC), woven bamboo fans from Chinese tombs (2nd century BC) and circular Roman fans (250 AD). Folding fans were invented in Japan in the 6th century and taken to China by monks in the 9th century.

Fans vanished from Europe in the middle ages, only to be reintroduced in the 13th and 14th centuries by crusaders. The fan culture flourished during the Renaissance. Later, due to the Eastern trade, fan-making became a recognised profession; the first guilds came up in Europe. The fan found its niche as a symbol of ceremony, battle, even fashion.
In India, while the common man was satisfied with the lowly palm leaf fan, the rich used fans of more opulent designs: for instance, fans made of ivory, peacock feather and silk.
The maharajas had special fan bearers, so too the British sahibs their ‘pankha-pullers’. A punkah or pankha, as it is known in Hindi and Urdu, is a hand-held fan made from a single frond of palmyra palm or a woven square of bamboo strips, rattan or other plant fibre, that can be rotated or fanned. These hand-held punkahs are still used by millions when ceiling fans stop working during common power outages.

In the colonial age, the word came to be used in a special sense by Anglo-Indians in British India for a large swinging fan, fixed to the ceiling, and pulled by a coolie, called the punkawallah. These are depicted in colonial paintings. The date of this invention is not known, but it was familiar to the Arabs as early as in 8th century. The punkah was not commonly used in India before the end of the 18th century. The electric fan largely replaced it in barracks and other large buildings at the beginning of the 20th century.

Every country, every region has its own unique tradition of making fans. There are traditional antique hand fans, fixed and revolving, made of palm leaves, cane, silver, feathers, silk, satin, leather, beads and bark. You’ll find colonial hand-pulled ceiling fans in palaces and churches the world over. Ritual temple fans of silver and brass, khus fans from Rajasthan and Kerala, the ancient phad (fist fans) from Uttar Pradesh, khajur fans dressed in silk, satin and zardozi, wedding fans from Hyderabad and Pakistan, fans made by various tribes with locally available material and the intricately woven majuli bisoni from Assam and beadwork fans from Gujarat, Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, China, Japan, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia all have their unique tradition of making fans.

In recent times, there is a contemporary twist to the traditional fan, like fans painted by modern contemporary artists. Fans may have ceased to be a functional item, but they continue to thrive as a craft and as show pieces.