Friday 12 February 2016

Why Antique Valentines Still Melt Modern Hearts

image credit Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Contrary to popular belief, Valentine's Day was not fabricated by Hallmark to make everyone spend money and feel miserable. In fact, pre-Hallmark Valentines can be breath-taking beautiful - or garish, overwrought assaults on the senses - depending on your mood.

Perhaps the romantic side of the holiday has been unfairly maligned. If you look at Valentines from the early to mid-1800s, when the artistry of paper tokens of love reached its height, your hard heart has to soften just a little bit. Either way, it's amazing how much painstaking effort lovers put into these paper tokens in the 18th and 19th centuries, before we all had Facebook cat GIFs.

(thanks Lisa)

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