Qualla: Fan Museum https://qualla.com/fan-museum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Fan Museum https://qualla.com/fan-museum Fan Museum: Introduction https://qualla.com/fan-museum/ Photo credit JRennocks, CC BY-SA 4.0. Picture an object so intimate you can hold it in one hand, so coded that a flick of the wrist once signaled a rendezvous, a refusal, or a declaration of love. Now picture a museum built around that object - the only one of its kind anywhere in the world. On Croom's Hill in Greenwich, two graceful Georgian townhouses built in 1721 conceal more than six thousand hand fans, the oldest dating to the eleventh century. The Fan Museum opened here in 1991, and it remains a wonderfully eccentric corner of the Greenwich World Heritage Site.

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Image: JRennocks | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/gcpu-fan-museum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Fan Museum: Two Houses on Croom's Hill https://qualla.com/fan-museum/ Photo credit Visit Greenwich from Greenwich, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. The buildings themselves tell half the story. Constructed in 1721, when Greenwich was still a riverside village distinct from London, the pair of Grade II* listed townhouses sit on the slope of Croom's Hill, looking down toward the great green sweep of Greenwich Park and the rive...

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Image: Visit Greenwich from Greenwich, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/gcpu-fan-museum-two-houses-on-crooms-hill.mp3 0:06 2 full Fan Museum: Six Thousand Whispers https://qualla.com/fan-museum/ Photo credit Visit Greenwich from Greenwich, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. The collection numbers over 6,000 fans and related materials as of 2023, ranging from an eleventh-century example to twentieth-century commercial pieces handed out at department stores and theaters. The strongest holdings are eighteenth and nineteenth-century European fans, the e...

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Image: Visit Greenwich from Greenwich, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/gcpu-fan-museum-six-thousand-whispers.mp3 0:06 3 full Fan Museum: The Orangery and the Garden https://qualla.com/fan-museum/ Photo credit JRennocks, CC BY-SA 4.0. Behind the houses, the surprise unfolds. A small orangery, its walls covered in murals, opens onto a Japanese-style garden where the parterre is laid out in the unmistakable curve of a fan. A pond ripples, a stream runs through the planted beds, and the geometry of the lawn echoe...

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Image: JRennocks | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/gcpu-fan-museum-the-orangery-and-the-garden.mp3 0:06 4 full Fan Museum: A Language Almost Forgotten https://qualla.com/fan-museum/ Photo credit AndyScott, CC0. What makes the museum more than a curio is what it preserves alongside the objects themselves: knowledge. The reference library and educational programs teach how fans were made, sold, used, and read. In Georgian and Victorian Europe, a fan held a particular way could signal comm...

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Image: AndyScott | CC0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/fan-museum-wp/gcpu-fan-museum-a-language-almost-forgotten.mp3 0:06 5 full