Traditional Papercut Valentines
Linda Peck, My Valentine
Valentine with poem; pinprick patterns
Puzzle Purse Valentine, to be curiously folded (1816)
Roxanne Boyd
Meek Company, England, machine-made lace paper Valentine, elaborately embellished (circa 1850). Nancy Rosin collection, A Victorian Treasury: The Valentine Resource.
Valentines as a form of American folk art were used as tokens of friendship, love, or loss in the Victorian period. Paper cut into lattice shapes of hearts and hands, were symbolic of a charitable giving heart, and sometimes associated with Shakers and other religious or social organizations. Using hair braided or woven into knots could add a personal element to the card.
Oberlin library special collections (tumblr 2020)
Find out more about the Papercut Valentines
- The images of several of Steven Woodbury’s donated collection of papercut Valentines as featured in the Oberlin Library Special Collections display in 2020.
- Nancy Rosin, A Victorian Treasury: The Valentine Resource
- Eve M. Kahn, “Three Centuries of Valentines Offer 12,000 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’”, New York Times, 13 February 2018
- Nancy Rosin, “Antique Papercuts and the Modern Valentine: The Fingerprints of Love” (self-published, 2007)