Three Centuries of Valentines Offer 12,000 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’
Another fold-open card from the Civil War era: “Thoughts of Home.”
A devotional card made in Paris in the mid-1800s that reads, “Crown of sorrows, crown of glory.” The image is
engraved on lace paper, with applied elements including die-cut and gilded scraps, tissue and dried flowers.
“Love was expressed in so many ways,” said Mrs. Rosin, who also helps catalog valentines at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Inscriptions and names on the cards and envelopes sometimes make it possible to determine
which correspondents ended up happily married and which broke up, said Mrs. Rosin.
The collection of about 12,000 cards was assembled over four decades by Nancy Rosin, a historian
and collector in Franklin Lakes, N. J., whose family has donated it to the museum.
A card from about 1855 with a biting message: “I’ll get married
but not to you.” It was created by Esther Howland, one of the most successful Valentine producers of the 19th century.
Look inside a vast collection of cards, from as early as the 1680s, featuring pop-ups, cutouts and Civil War soldiers.
