Hand-Held Delight: The Eighteenth-Century Fan
During September 2000, the Lambda Psi Chapter of Pi
Delta Phi,
in conjunction
with the Fan Association of North America and the Boston College Department of Romance Languages and Literatures,
helped to bring the Mr. and Mrs. Frederick B. Hicks Collection of eighteenth
century fans to light.
Working along side with the McMullen Museum exhibit Hand-Held Delight: The Eighteenth-Century Fan, PDP sponsored an invitational symposium. Titled The Incredible Commerce: the Art and Fashion of the Fan Trade in Eighteenth-Century France, the day-long program discussed issues ranging from the history of fans to their influence in French society.
PDP member also prepared a thirty-minute video about the fan collection at Boston College. The first part of the video highlights selected fans from the Hicks Collection together with brief descriptions against a background of period music. The second part of the video presents the craft of eighteenth-century fan-making as depicted in the engravings of Diderot's Encyclopédie. Each step is illustrated from the original plates and described with a brief English text, translated from the French
