Fans upon Waves
Not on view
Wave-based imagery and designs, popular among painters of the Rinpa school, are here combined with another favorite image, the folding fan (ōgi). A screen ornamented with fans acted as a sort of miniature museum where many works of art could be viewed at once. The fans often appeared against a background of flowing water, a type of imagery that may have evolved from the medieval custom of casting fans into the water to float upon the surface. Screens painted with the fans-and-stream motif, known as “fans afloat” (senmen nagashi), were often installed in shogunal residences and may have derived from a tale about a Muromachi-period shogun who accidentally dropped a fan from a bridge.
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