Wedding Fan (mid-1800s): Art, History and Details

Wedding Fan (mid-1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the Joseon period, women between the ages of 14 and 20 were matched with a husband through an arranged marriage. Even during the marriage ceremony, a bride was supposed to veil her face with this type of embroidered fan as a gesture of chastity. The fan’s body is made of paper and silk trimmed with a gilded metal rim. On the front, four cranes—one pair in blue, the other in yellow—are stitched along with auspicious clouds. The back is adorned with dragons flying amid clouds. The metal band vertically running down the center is incised with a bat, a symbol of wealth.

Object facts

• Title: Wedding Fan
• Date: mid-1800s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: Copper alloy; satin weave silk; silk and metal thread embroidery; and paper
• Dimensions: Diameter: 25.6 cm (10 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1918.558

A detail from the museum

This fan was not to cool oneself, but rather to veil a bride's face during a wedding ceremony as a gesture of chastity.

Collection credit

Director's Contingent Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ye, Yonghae. "Buchae." Yeyonghae chŏnjip. Soeul: Daewonsa, 2002.
• Sim, Nam-ho. "Empirical Study on the Fan in latter Chosun Dynasty." Dong asia godaehak vol. 49 (March 2018): 243–270.
• Ch'a, Mi-rae, Kwi-suk An, Cleveland Museum of Art, and 국외소재문화재재단. The Korean Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Edited by An Min-hŭi. First edition, English ed. Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Series, 16. Seoul, Republic of Korea: Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.