The ceiling forty-eight painters made
Miyawaki Baisen-an has sold fans in Kyoto since 1823. The name is not the founder’s: the painter Tomioka Tessai gave it to the house in 1887, and it has carried his wording ever since.
In 1902 forty-eight masters of the Kyoto art world each painted a panel for the shop’s ceiling. The ceiling is still there. It costs nothing to see — you walk in off Rokkaku street, look up, and there it is, above the fans.
A finished folding fan passes through an artisan’s hands eighty-seven times. The paper is folded, the ribs are shaved and threaded, the face is mounted, dried, trimmed and finished; different people do different parts, and the count is the house’s own.
What that means for a fan in Singapore is simple enough. It opens without resistance, it closes flat, and the fold holds its line after a season of use — which is the whole argument for buying a fan from a house that has been making them for two centuries rather than one stamped out in a day.