| Beginning in the early decades of the 19th century,
women and young ladies kept memory books and friendship
albums which they filled 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
This extraordinary love token was taken from a memory
album (prior to my acquisition). It features the hair
of two children--Martha Hill, hair taken at 18 months, and
Patience Hill, hair taken at 12 years. The hair is
adorned with hand-cut hearts and hands. Patience's
hair is also adorned with a bit of Dresden tape.
Across the bottom of the page is a very faded inscription
that reads "Mrs. Preston Present from M.M.B."
[I'm not entirely sure about the three initials.] The
page is spectacularly adorned in a very fraktur-like fashion
with a watercolor tree topped by a heart. I have
framed this beautiful piece of American folk art in a walnut
frame with an unusual gold leaf ripple liner carved into the
walnut. The frame has a wonderful dry original
surface. The love token is lightly hinged with
archival tape to a bit of handmade acid-free paper that has
a rough top edge that mimics the rough top edge of the love
token. This is all placed atop lovely paper that is
hand-marbled in the same method that has been used since the
18th century. This type of marbled paper was favored
by 19th century Americans. The frame measures 14 1/2"
x 12 3/4". The love token, itself, measures 7 3/8" x
about 5 7/8". Don't miss this glorious bit of folk
art--love tokens this good just don't come up for sale
anymore! Circa second quarter of the 19th century.
(#4248) $1250
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)). |
