The modelling is somewhat rude and archaic, but extremely rich in decorative effect. One edge of the fan is fixed in the box, the other is attached to one of the lateral panels, which, in order to open the fan, is drawn over and attached to the reversed side by means of a cord. Both sides are figured in colours in Du Sommerard’s work _Les Arts du Moyen Age_. Of other flabella which exist, one is preserved in the Dominican Monastery of Prouille, in the diocese of Toulouse; another, with a handle of silver, was formerly at St. Victor, near Marseilles. In the British Museum is a portion of an ivory handle of a flabellum, French, of the twelfth century, about twelve inches in length, finely carved with figures of the twelve Apostles and emblems of the Evangelists. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a similar fragment, but smaller, carved with compartments of animals, mythical beasts, monsters, etc.; these probably formed the two divisions of one single flabellum. These handles were sometimes square-shaped, as in the instance of the fragment in the Salting collection at present in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is also French, of the fourteenth century, and is carved on each of its sides with figures of saints in niches, with crocketed arches. A portion of the cylindrical stem of a flabellum or aspergillum, probably French of the twelfth century, is in the British Museum. This represents the occupations of the twelve months of the year in three bands, as follows: January, a two-headed Janus looking in opposite directions; February, a figure seated before a fire; March, cutting trees with a hatchet; April, gathering blossoms; May, an equestrian figure with hawk; June, a mower with sickle and hooked stick; July, a mower with scythe; August, a reaper with sickle; September, thrashing wheat; October, sowing corn; November, killing a pig; December, pouring wine into a cask. The figures are separated from each other by trees, and the three bands by rings ornamented with foliage and zigzag patterns with semi-rosettes, and at top and bottom are rings with half-defaced inscriptions. There is also in the same collection a capital of morse ivory for the handle of a flabellum, North German, twelfth century. These instruments figure repeatedly in inventories of church and abbey property. Butler quotes from one at St. Riquier, near Abbeville, in 831, ‘a silver fan for chasing flies from the sacrifice.’ At Amiens, in 1250, there existed a fan for a similar purpose, ‘flabellum factum de serico et auro ad repellendas muscas et immunda.’ In 1363 La Sainte Chapelle possessed ‘duo flabella vulgariter nuncupata muscalia, ornata perlis’; in 1376, ‘ij flabella, Gallice esmouchoirs, ornata de perlis.’ In the sacrist rolls of Ely, ‘Item, j flabello empt. ad Aurifabrum, 7d. Item, in pari flabellorum pro le Colpeyt empt. 6d.’