ABSTRACT
The business of fan-making is one of hundreds that arose during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, occupations that employed primarily women and girls in the making of inessential luxuries and small niceties, shaped by fashion. Colonial commerce and extra-European contacts moulded this trade. ‘China fans’ were celebrated by the playwright Ben Jonson among the profusion of imports in the early seventeenth century, the sort of desirable good to be showcased at the New Exchange, the pre-eminent shopping site in Jacobean London. Tortoise shell, ebony and ivory were carried to London from distant ports to become the raw materials for English fan-makers. The success of this English enterprise, inspired by Asian progenitors, then became the basis for Indian copies and the source of this complaint. This undated petition likely arises after 1660 when East Indian imports were at their peak. Competition with Indian manufacturers was by that time a persistent political concern.
