Brisé

The French word Brisè literally means broken. The fan so called is built in such a way that the sticks, gradually enlarging from the throat, succeed in forming the page itself in a succession of pieces detached one from the other; a little ribbon, put on the superior board, guarantees the right spread of the fan. The first Brisè of European production, first of all French and Dutch, maybe imitations of objects coming from China, they appear between the end of the XVII century and the beginning of the XVIII century and they are made of smooth and painted ivory.  Just after some decade, they will be imported from the East; they appear as very fine laces, with a technique unknown in the old continent. The fans Brisè will have a new impulse in the XIX century, with different materials (wood, cuttle-bone, tortoiseshell) until arriving to celluloid and bakelite; but the  smooth or fretted ones, they will never reach the perfection of the Chinese ones of the middle of the XVIII century.
"Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail." Leonardo Da Vinci