Enfilade

My nomination for notable exhibition title of the year comes from the current show at the Fan Museum in Greenwich (complete with the use of the older spelling of that third term and the irresistible ‘part II’). -CH

Hatch, Match & Despatch, Part II
The Fan Museum, Greenwich, 11 January — 1 June 2014

An intriguing display of fans which commemorate births, marriages and deaths…

Covering a period of over 300 years (beginning in the mid seventeenth century), the exhibition reveals how fans recorded not only joyous occasions of national significance such as royal births and weddings but those of a darker, melancholic nature, too. From lavishly crafted examples given as part of a bride’s wedding trousseau to modest commemorative confections produced in quantity and designed to appeal to all pockets, these fans reveal an often subtle undercurrent of dynastic and political intrigue.

Hatch, Match & Despatch celebrates the theatricality of love, life and death—the foundations upon which all human experience is built.

Pictured on the French fan on the right-hand side of the poster is The Marriage of the Dauphin, ca. 1770.