Lisa,

Last year we had to conserve / restore a fan that had been previously
mounted in a shadow box via brads that had been pushed throught the
hand painted paper backing. the box was dropped and the fan broke
loose - the pins tore through the painter paper and the ivory sticks
were smashed into a zillion little pieces - it took most of a summer
to piece, mend, and remount this fan from a private client.

So, don't use pins!!!

There are so good online resources for mounting fans (I beleive that
there may even be a conservo-gram on them).

What we ended up doing was getting blue board, laying the fan out, and
attaching small ethafoam blocks with hot glue to the board to block
the fan in place.  We also marked out attachment holes for
monofillament, then covered the board with an inert polyester velvet.
Then tied the monofillament onto the sticks and then through the
fabric / blue board and tied it off on the back side. Once we were
positive that everything was stable we rehoused it within the orginal
shadow box and it was done.

An even better idea is not to mount a fan vertically (gravity
eventually wins!) and to do a horizontal display on top of a raked
archival board.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Conservator
Los Angeles, California


On 7/18/06, Lisa Bedell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Museum Listserve,
>
> I am planning a small exhibit on folding fans.  Any advice on how to
> mount/install them on the wall?  The museum has 4 exhibition cases, but I am
> looking for suggestions on how to display them in a safe and attractive way.
>
> Many thanks.
>
> Lisa Bedell, Curator
> Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden
> 421 East 61st Street, New York, NY  10021
>
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