This object from the museum collections has always been a bit of a riddle, and is an excellent example of how and why museum collections should be regarded as opportunities for continued study and scholarship. What, exactly, is it? Where did it come from? And which member of the Longfellow family acquired it?
The object is a fan. Its structure consists of three roughly circular concentric rings of bent wood with the center and space between the two inner rings covered with paper, featuring red and green flower or fruit designs painted on a gold ground. Stitched to the outermost bent wood ring are hundreds of plant fibers, possibly grass, roots or very thin twigs, of up to five- or six-inches length radiating outwards along almost its entire circumference. A small handle at the bottom is made of dried mud, covered with painted paper, and wrapped with blue and red pieces of cloth.
Although it seemed plainly evident that the object was a fan, for years nothing else about it was known. Best guesses identified it as a piece probably collected by Charles Longfellow, the poet’s eldest child, during his far-flung world travels. The problem was that the fan did not stylistically look like anything associated with the regions to which Charles was known to have travelled. Its design did not fit with items Charles collected in Asia, the South Pacific, South America, or North Africa.
It was not until a visit to the Longfellow House was made in 2018 by members of the Harvard Peabody Museum that some idea of the fan’s origin was arrived at. One of the Peabody Museum staff noted a similar item was in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and images and a catalog record were accessible online. A quick look at the Smithsonian’s example revealed an almost identical match, and identified the fan as being from Sierra Leone, in West Africa, and dating from the 1850s.
Despite the identification, the fan’s intended purpose and the identity of its collector are still mysteries. The Smithsonian’s record has “Ceremonial?” noted in the record, along with a geographical note as to where it was collected, but little else. What culture the fan’s creator belonged to, how it was meant to be utilized, and how it came to be in the collections of the Longfellow House are all questions that have yet to be answered, offering plenty of opportunity for future researchers to delve into.