None of these ancient feather-fans exist in their complete form, from the perishable nature of the ostrich plume, which, in the lapse of time, crumbles to fragments, and from this circumstance the remarkable feather hand-screen in the possession of Mr. Messel is of the highest interest. A few handles, however, are to be found in the various collections, both public and private. A pretty ivory handle of a sixteenth-century Italian feather-fan is in the Salting collection, at present at South Kensington. This is delicately carved with two half-length female figures issuing from acanthus-leaved ornament, and holding a festoon of drapery, a mask of Cupid above. Near the handle end are two winged terminal monsters. The head of an ivory-fan handle, also Italian of the same period, is in the South Kensington collection: this has a female terminal (head restored) and two dolphins forming the top, two masks on either side, with other terminals and cornucopiæ. [Illustration: GHOST FAN. Malay Archipelago (Ethnological Museum, Berlin.)] [Illustration: Italian Fan, cut vellum mount. finely painted with miniatures, end of 17th Cent., stick ivory, of later date. Mr. L. C. R. Messel.] CHAPTER VI PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (ITALIAN AND SPANISH) The establishment of the Portuguese as a conquering power in the far East dates from the first expedition of Vasco da Gama in 1497. Five years earlier, Christopher Columbus had sailed westward over the Atlantic, bearing a letter from his royal mistress to the great Khán of Tartary, seeking India and far Cathay, and finding instead—America. [Illustration: FAN OF FERRARA, OR ‘DUCK’S-FOOT’] The three expeditions of Vasco da Gama, during the first twenty years of the sixteenth century, together with the operations of Alfonso d’Albuquerque, resulted in the complete supremacy of Portugal as a trading power with the East. From Japan and the Spice Islands to the Red Sea and the Cape of Good Hope, they were the sole masters and dispensers of the treasures of the East,[83] and during the whole of the sixteenth century enjoyed a complete monopoly of the Oriental trade. As early as 1502, the King of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting him ‘Lord of the Navigation, Conquests, and Trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,’ but it was not until 1516 that the Portuguese made their appearance in China, where, ‘at Ningpo, they succeeded in establishing a colony, carrying on a gainful trade with other parts of China, as well as with Japan.’[84] It was thus that the folding-fan found its way first to Portugal through its traders.