Click here to see an excerpt from Duvelleroy's The Language of the Fan!
The Language of the Fan
In 1827, a Parisian fan maker and retailer named Duvelleroy published a small pamphlet that listed and explained coded messages that were associated with specific fan gestures. While it is impossible to know exactly who used these codes in their social encounters, this pamphlet became widely popular, and has been referenced in numerous works of fiction such as Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan.
