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Love token with hair of baby Horace Preston (taken at 10
months), the hair of his father, Horace Preston, Sr. and the hair of
mother, Patty Preston.
Currently available on
Folk Art page.
Love token with braided hair and fabric
heart.
Love token for "Mrs. Preston Present from M.M.B."
Includes hair of Martha Hill (18 months) & Patience Hill (12 years).
Same album as above with blue hears.
Currently available on
Folk Art page.
Marriage Proposal Poem Written On
Reverse of Love Token Scherenchnitte Valentine
Marriage Prayer |
Nineteenth century women were quite
demonstrative with their love and friendship. They presented
friends of both sexes with tokens of friendship such as small paintings,
poems, cut and woven hearts and hands, pressed flowers, braided locks of
hair. These gifts were added to the memory book which the gift
recipient almost certainly had at home. Friendship albums were
offered for sale, often bound in leather by book merchants, sometimes
with the owner's name or monogram engraved in gold onto the leather
cover. Young ladies filled these albums with paper and fabric
cuttings of hearts and hands embellished with woven or otherwise
arranged hair of friends and family.
Woven hearts and hands embellished with hair were traded as 19th
century tokens of love and friendship. The double lobed heart has
been the symbol of love since antiquity, showing up in Cro-Magnon
pictograms and early Egyptian paintings. European immigrants
brought the heart as the symbol of romantic love to America where they
added two other symbols, the heart and hand and the heart in hand which
both symbolized the heart's guidance of the hand's actions. This
beautiful and sensitive image of love shows up in highly collectible
Christmas, New Years, and Valentine greetings and declarations of love.
Because hair does not disintegrate if it is properly
protected, American women made it a symbol of abiding love
as well as deeply felt loss. Mothers kept locks of
their children's hair and unmarried women often gave locks
of their hair to suitors as tokens of love. Locks of
sitter's hair were often added to miniature portraits.
A popular nineteenth-century women's periodical described
hair ". . . at once the most delicate and last of our
materials. [It] survives us like love. It is so
light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that,
with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend we may
almost look up to heaven and compare notes with angelic
nature, may almost say, I have a piece of thee here, not
unworthy of thy being now."1
Symbolism was extremely important to 19th century women who used it
extensively in their tokens of friendship and love. Clasped hands
symbolized "hands in trust forever" and this symbol is found on many
friendship and love tokens of the period. Many poems and paintings
included the request "remember me." A single heart symbolized the
source of the soul. A basket signified wealth and riches of the
maternal body; a box was a feminine symbol, a receptacle. A
butterfly suggested the flight of the soul. An interlocked chain
indicated communication. An anchor represented hope. A clock
meant the passage of time and sometimes represented death. A dove
meant purity or peace; a swan meant love and purity. A flower cast
down with petals strewn below might indicate death. A dog
represented fidelity. A cornucopia meant abundance. Color
was also incorporated to change the symbolism of some flowers. A
deep red rose meant bashful shame. A white rose represented
sadness; a yellow rose meant "let us forget", a red rosebud meant pure
and lovely and a white rosebud was for someone who was too young to
love.
Calligraphy drawings made their way into friendship albums atop
handwritten poems and on handmade calling cards that might include a
beautifully flourished dove above a scripted name. Young women
often painted beautiful symbols of affection on small round papers that
were intended to be set inside the cover of a father or husband's watch
so that he would think of the giver every time he checked the time.
These small watchpapers were done in watercolor on paper (often with
saw-tooth cut borders) and as small embroidery pictures. Sea moss
was pressed into letters and small pictures to add to the memory albums.
Flowers, birds and butterflies were painted in watercolor and then
meticulously cut out so that they could be applied to larger paper in
compositions that might also include a poem or the woven or looped hair
of a loved one.
Friendship might also be pledged in the form of a puzzle in which the
intersection of connecting shapes symbolized the vow on constancy.
A knot (a familiar theme in love puzzles) represented linkage, bonding,
connections without beginning or end.
Today we value these love and friendship tokens as memories of the
past and a hope for the future.
References:
Eisenbarth, Erin E., "Made for Love: Selections from the
Jane Katcher Collection of Americana", Spring 2007, Antiques &
Fine Art. (online article at
antiquesandfineart.com)
Shaw, Robert. "United as this Heart You See: Memories
of Friendship and Family", Expressions of Innocence
and Eloquence Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of
Americana, Ed. Jane Katcher, David A. Schorsch, Ruth
Wolfe. Marquand Books, 2006. 85-101.
Ockenga, Starr. On Women & Friendship A Collection of
Victorian Keepsakes and Traditions. Stewart,
Tabori & Chang, 1993. 107-117.
1Shaw,
id. at 101 (quoting Leigh Hunt, Godey's Lady's
Book (May 1855)). Please see the
love tokens currently in inventory on the
Folk Art page.
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Tokens of Love & Friendship
