Fan of red-tailed black cockatoo feathers with carved ivory handle. Australia, 1880s.

[Australia : unknown Chinese maker(s), 1880-1890]. Ivory, 21 red-tailed black cockatoo feathers, silk, metal; maximum diameter 620 mm, open; 350 x 110 mm (irregular), closed; extremely well preserved; accompanied by the original purpose-built camphor wood box, the hinged lid with relief-carved decorations, the interior lined with blue silk and red paper.

This ornamental fan was made in Australia in the 1880s by Chinese artisans. It was probably produced and sold by a Chinese commercial enterprise in the Chinatown district of Palmerston (Darwin), the cockatoo feathers being traded from local Indigenous people. It is not only an object of exceptional beauty, but also a rare survivor that interweaves Chinese artisanal and social traditions, Australian Indigenous culture and European colonial taste.

The red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii) is a bird native to Australia whose habitat in the late nineteenth century would have extended to most parts of the mainland, including the Northern Territory. The feathers used in this fan, with their distinctive orange-yellow panels, are from the adult female.

Another fan almost identical to the present example is held in the NGV collection (Australian Fashion and Textiles, Accession Number 748A-D5). It is dated to around 1880. The physical description in the NGV catalogue entry reads, in part: ‘Imported carved ivory frame figures, buildings, trees and flowers, guards decorated with 21 black cockatoo feathers, 2 cream silk tassels attached to metal loop’.

On comparing the appearance, materials, craftsmanship, mode of manufacture and dimensions of the two objects, it is difficult not to conclude that both the NGV fan and the present example were made by the same maker or workshop, around the same time. Crucially, however, the example offered here is still accompanied by its original wooden box which, with its intricate relief-carved decoration to the lid and silk-lined and red-papered interior, expresses much about how the fan was likely to have been regarded by its maker(s), the original retailer and its first owner: it was clearly valued as a precious treasure.

Marion Fletcher, in Costume in Australia 1788-1901 (Melbourne : OUP, 1984), illustrates the NGV example (pl. #152) and comments immediately below: ‘… there can be no doubt of the origin of this interesting example: it was made in Darwin by Chinese settlers….’. In her further brief discussion of the fan (ibid., pp.180-1) she makes a more general statement about the object: ‘There is no doubt … about the Australian origin of the fan in illustration (152) … as it is made of black cockatoo feathers.‘

Chinese were legally allowed to enter and work in the Territory from 1874, when they were recruited from Singapore by the South Australian government as labourers on the goldfields and later on the construction of the railway from Palmerston to Pine Creek. They were soon allowed to work their own claims, establish market gardens and conduct other forms of business. Palmerston’s Chinatown was a hive of commercial activity by the 1880s, with a plethora of enterprises providing a wide range of services and trading all manner of goods.

Probably forged through the common experience of being non-European “outsiders”, a close relationship between the Chinese and Indigenous communities in Darwin had developed from very early on. This strong connection has been well documented and is today still manifest in Top End society through a range of social ties and the large number of families of mixed cultural heritage. It is entirely plausible that the Chinese maker(s) of this fan drew their inspiration to decorate it with black cockatoo feathers from local Indigenous people, who would have sourced the feathers as a commodity to be traded with their Chinese interlocutors.

Further reading: Diana Giese, Beyond Chinatown : changing perspectives on the Top End Chinese experience (Canberra : NLA, 1995)