Chinese Sandalwood Fans

Section 01

What makes a fan sandalwood

Sandalwood means one thing: the fragrant heartwood of trees in the genus Santalum — in Chinese, tánxiāng (檀香). The trade has always leaned on East Indian sandalwood (Santalum album), a slow-growing tree whose scent sits inside the wood rather than on it. A sandalwood fan is that material cut, carved and pierced into a fan.

The word gets used loosely, and three different woods get mixed up under it. Sandalwood (檀香, Santalum) is dense and fine-grained, warm brown to gold, and smells of its own oils. Agarwood (沉香, chénxiāng) is a dark, resinous wood from Aquilaria trees; it is also an incense material, and it forms only when the tree has been damaged. Rosewood and zitan (紫檀) are dense dark woods used for furniture and boxes — heavy and handsome, but not fragrant. A listing that cannot say which of the three you are looking at has not told you much.

Sandalwood also behaves the way fan-making wants it to. It is dense and even-grained, so it holds a cut edge without splintering; it polishes to a soft sheen rather than a shine; and it gives a fan real weight in the hand. Where a bamboo fan is built to be used hard, a sandalwood fan is built to be kept.

Section 02

A Suzhou craft

Suzhou, in Jiangsu, is the city attached to the sandalwood fan. With Hangzhou it was one of the two great centres of Chinese fan-making, and by the Qing dynasty its workshops had split the trade into separate hands — rib carvers, leaf painters, assemblers — each with its own reputation. The carved sandalwood fan (檀香扇, tánxiāng shàn) became Suzhou's signature piece, and it is still the fan people mean when they name the city.

Suzhou's workshops served two markets at once. Fans went to scholars and officials as gifts, and carved Chinese fans went abroad on the export trade; sandalwood examples dated to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries now sit in museum collections in Europe. Within the workshop's output, the sandalwood fan was always the luxury end, alongside ivory and rare woods.

The craft survives, but the economics are unforgiving. Sandalwood grows slowly and costs accordingly, and a finely pierced leaf can take days of carving. That difference in labour is what separates the two price worlds described in Chinese folding fan price.

Section 03

How sandalwood fans are made

A sandalwood fan is carved in stages, and the order matters as much as the tools.

• Choosing the wood — heartwood only, evenly toned and free of cracks. Slow-grown timber gives the densest grain and the most scent.
• Cutting — the wood is sawn into thin, even slats. On the all-wood fans Suzhou is known for, the leaf itself is made from sandalwood strips, so there is no paper to yellow and no silk to stain.
• Shaping — the ribs and the two outer guard sticks are tapered, rounded and smoothed by hand so the fan lies flat when it is closed.
• Piercing (拉花, lāhuā) — the openwork. A fine saw and knife cut right through the wood, leaving lattices, flowers and figures joined by slender bridges. It is the stage where one slip ruins the leaf.
• Scorching (烫花, tànghuā) — on some fans the decoration is burned into the surface with a heated tool instead of painted. The shading comes out in tones of brown and cannot rub off.
• Assembly — the ribs are drilled and pinned at the rivet, and on pierced fans the sticks are also threaded together with silk cord so they cannot spread.

Machine work is part of this market too, and it is not dishonest — it is simply cheaper. The difference shows at the edge of every opening. Hand-pierced work has crisp walls and slight variation; a machine leaves fretwork that is identical to the millimetre and often ringed with a scorched halo. Hold the fan up to the light and you can see which one you have. The hand side of that calculation is the same one described in handmade Chinese folding fans: what you are paying for is hours.

The leaf is where sandalwood fans part company with the rest of the craft. A silk fan lives or dies by its surface; a sandalwood fan has no soft surface to protect, because every part of it is the material itself. Damage to a carved fan is therefore almost always structural — a broken bridge in the piercing, a split rib, a loose rivet.

Section 04

Scent & aging

The scent is why people buy sandalwood, and often why they are disappointed by it. The fragrance comes from oils inside the wood, so it is strongest when the fan is new — freshly cut, freshly pierced, freshly polished. Those surface oils are also the first thing to go.

In the hand the smell reads dry and warm rather than perfumed: closer to incense, pencil shavings and an old bookshelf than to a scented candle. Open the fan and it is noticeable; leave it closed in a drawer for a month and it drops to almost nothing. That is normal behaviour for the material, not a sign that you were sold the wrong thing.

• Keep it closed in a box. Wood that is not sitting in moving air holds its scent longer.
• Keep it away from perfume, scented drawers, air fresheners and plastic bags — sandalwood absorbs whatever it lives near, including the wrong things.
• Keep it out of direct sun and dry heat. Sandalwood cracks and warps like any wood, and strong light fades the surface.
• Keep water away from it. A dry cloth is the right tool; a wet fan is a cracked fan.
• If the scent fades, store the fan with a few sandalwood shavings, or rub the wood lightly with a dry cloth to open the surface. Do not treat it with furniture polish or fragrance.

How long the scent lasts has no single honest answer. It depends on how the wood was cut and kept, how dry your climate is, and how often the fan sees air. A fan that is looked after keeps some of it for years. A seller who promises it will never fade is selling you something other than sandalwood. The wider routine, including what to do when a fan is damaged, is in how to care for a Chinese folding fan.

Section 05

Sandalwood vs bamboo vs ivory

The choice is simpler than the table looks. If you want a fan to use all summer, buy bamboo: it is cheap, it springs back, and nothing about it is precious enough to make you nervous about opening it. If you want a fan to give, display or collect, sandalwood is the one that carries weight — it looks like carving, it smells like something, and it will not end up forgotten at the back of a drawer. Ivory, once at the top of this ladder, is now at the bottom for anyone buying new.

Shape matters as much as material. Sandalwood is mostly sold as folding fans, but the round fan and the feather fan are their own traditions with their own materials — the overview is in types of Chinese fans.

Section 06

Buying checklist

Sandalwood is expensive enough that the market is full of near-misses. Six checks before you pay:

• Weight. A sandalwood fan should feel heavy for its size — noticeably heavier than a bamboo fan of the same dimensions.
• Where the smell comes from. Sandalwood smells at its cut edges and pierced openings, not from every surface. A fan that is scented all over, like a perfume counter, has been treated.
• The grain. Look for fine, even, warm brown grain. A coat of paint or a dark stain across the whole surface is usually there to hide a cheaper wood.
• The piercing, held to the light. Crisp, slightly varied openwork is hand-cut. Fretwork that is identical everywhere, with scorched edges, is machine-cut.
• The names. Ask which species and where the fan was made. “Sandalwood” on its own tells you nothing; you want 檀香, Santalum album, or the name of a workshop.
• Build, not just carving. The fan should open to an even arc, the ribs should sit together when closed, and the rivet should be tight. A beautiful leaf on a sloppy frame will not last.

The check most buyers skip comes before the shop: decide what the fan is for. A fan that lives in a box can afford to be delicate and finely pierced; one that travels should be simpler and tougher. The same logic — materials, construction, provenance — is set out for folding fans in authentic Chinese folding fans, and if the fan is a gift, Chinese fan gifts matches material to occasion.

Section 07

Frequently asked questions