This fan is a rare survival of an early folding fan and belongs to a small group that includes single examples at the Château d'Ecouen and in Boston. In each case the geometric decoration has been cut out of the leaf using a small knife. The decoration was copied or adapted from the printed plates of one of the many pattern books that were published in Italy from the mid-sixteenth century. The design would have been laid over the leaf and the outlines pricked onto the leaf with pins. The holes made by the pins in the course of the transfer process can still be seen on this fan under magnification. The leaf, formed from the skin of an animal (possibly a dog in the case of this fan), was mounted by threading the pointed ends of the sticks through slots cut into the leaf. The upper portions of the sticks have traces of green and red pigment and remains of copper strips covered with a white metal (possibly tin). Fans such as this appear in a number of painted portraits, which provide the principal dating evidence. One example is the (uncoloured) fan held by Diana Cecil, Countess of Oxford, in the portrait of c. 1614-18 attributed to William Larkin. Appropriately, that fan is shown in the context of Lady Oxford's rich apparel, which includes ruff, cuffs and handkerchief adorned with deep borders of reticella lace of a similar type to that which formed the basis of the pattern in the present fan. In the late sixteenth century folding fans are normally shown with richly decorated sticks. The fan with pierced and coloured leaf held by Agatha Bas in Rembrandt's portrait of 1641 is a later example of this genre.

The fan is one of the twenty-four Stuart relics from the Hamey collection purchased for the Royal Collection for £350 in 1910. Dr Baldwin Hamey (1600-1676) was a successful physician in London throughout much of the seventeenth century. In his later years he assembled quantities of relics relating to Charles I. This was one of two fans included in the 1910 purchase. The specific association of these fans with Charles I is not recorded and the second fan would appear to post-date his execution. However, both fans are listed in the inventory of 1829 acquired with the relics in 1910. In August 1892 the collection had been offered by the then owner, Mrs Still of Seaton, Devon, to Queen Victoria's last librarian, Richard Holmes. Negotiations for a royal purchase continued through the reign of King Edward VII but were not finalised until the first months of King George V's reign. By 1916 these items had been arranged by Queen Mary as part of the display in the newly designated Stuart Room in Windsor Castle.

Text adapted from Unfolding Pictures: Fans in the Royal Collection, 2005