The first folding fans manufactured in Europe were copied from prototypes brought from Asia. These early fans were reserved for royalty and the nobility and, as expensive toys; they were regarded as a status symbol.
Furthermore, responsible for a strong symbolic system related to joys and sorrows of love, the fan inspired the poets, as well in the East as in the Occident. Poems sometimes written on the fan itself contributed to make fans an essential instrument of the female strategies of seduction, or to make it such in men's mind as revealed in these verses written in the 17th century by French poet Mathieu de Montreuil.
I took your fan, Madam
But don't be angry
Think to my heat, consider my flame
You will see that I have for it more need than you
