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Valentine card
Publisher: Unknown
A 4to-sized valentine on thin, white wove paper with an applied passion flower of twisted paper at the centre. An ornate, lithographed border design of basket-weave in gold and green ink (reminiscent of Coalbrookdale porcelain design - which is interesting considering that Glaisher was a reknowned collector of English and continental ceramics) and with yellow, pink and red hand colouring used for butterflies, flowers and a flaming torch and quiver of arrows. Yellow roses, printed and hand-coloured are pasted onto the paper at upper and lower centre. A hand-written inscription in blue ink: "Believe my heart will ever prove / faithful unto thee my love". At the centre is a hand-drawn roundel of gold ink with scalloped inner edge and radiating strokes around the outer edge. Inside the roundel, the applied passion flower is hand-coloured and constructed from twisted paper which can be pulled upwards into a 'raised' position. A similar flower can be seen applied to another valentine, P.14414-R-19. It is common for such a device to have revealed a message when untwisted, but this does not appear to be the case here. "85" inscribed in black ink at lower right followed by "13 /" in graphite [/ denotes shillings]. The inside pages are blank. An example of a similar applied flower can be seen at the Pinterest site of the National Valentine Collectors Association, in collaboration with the John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/424393964866039892/. This card is in the collection of Nancy Rosin and is dated c. 1825. Certainly, the hand-drawn and hand-coloured elements make it possible that this Valentine is quite early in date, circa 1820s or 1830s. It is comparable in size and style to P.14344-R-61.
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr
19th Century
Circa
1830
-
Circa
1840
Accession number: P.14344-R-60
Primary reference Number: 214277
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Paintings, Drawings and Prints
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Valentine card" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/214277 Accessed: 2024-05-10 08:09:29
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/214277
|title=Valentine card
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-05-10 08:09:29|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:
https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-214277
To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:
<div class="text-center">
<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/pdp/pdp77/P_14344_R_60_1_201612_amt49_dc2.jpg"
alt="Valentine card"
class="img-fluid" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Valentine card</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
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