Timeless Tokens of Affection
Before there were Hallmark valentines and store-bought chocolate, people put a little more time and effort into their tokens of affection.
An exhibition currently at the Yale University Art Gallery, "Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana," uncovers a lost world of effusive and labor-intensive expressions of love, from handmade valentines, to friendship albums, in which girls recorded visits to and from friends, to portraits of children. The works are selected from the collection of Jane Katcher, a retired pediatric radiologist who lives in Coral Gables, Fla., and has been collecting Americana since the 1970s. A book documenting her collection, called "Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence," was published by Yale University Press in December.
The works in the exhibition range from a memory book kept by a woman in Middlebury, Vermont, named Sarah Tracy, between 1866 and 1877, which is decorated with watercolor paintings of flowers and loops of woven hair, to a maple box painted between 1810 and 1830 by a young woman, probably at one of the contemporary academies, which teenage girls attended for anywhere from a semester to a couple of years, to be instructed not only in academic subjects, but in painting, calligraphy, and needlework.
Ms. Katcher said she first became interested in tokens of affection when she saw some early valentines listed for sale in one of the publications she subscribes to. She also became fascinated with friendship albums, which offered the opportunity for some detective work. "Some were signed and dated," she said. "Some were simply signed. Some were signed, dated, and also indicated cities and towns and states."
Friendship books were kept almost entirely by girls, she said, and the practice seems to have developed at girls' academies. Girls who met at the academies would later pay visits to one another's homes, during which they would write in their friendship books.
The inscriptions "go from the very simple, simply writing one's name, to perhaps a psalm or a biblical phrase or a poem, or something that's completely extemporaneous or personal," Ms. Katcher said.
The effusive expressions of love in these books reflect a time when people were both more dependent on one another and less inhibited about voicing their affection. "People openly demonstrated their love by doing things for each other — by writing very loving expressions, by making things, like a valentine that included a beautiful watercolor, a lovely statement, and perhaps a woven lock of hair," Ms. Katcher said.
The scholar Steven Mintz, who is speaking on March 30 at a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition, said that these objects show that Romanticism was not simply a movement of elite poets and artists. "A real revolution in sensibilities occurred in early 19th century as we began to romanticize certain experiences," he said. "We often think of our ancestors as more repressed and much less in touch with their feelings, and we are liberated," but it's not true, he said. "People in the 19th century in many ways were more passionate. It was directed differently; samesex relationship were very important to them, also because crosssex relationship were very tense."
Ms. Katcher said she is attracted to these objects partly because their beauty and the labor that went into them express a different conception of time from our own. "The idea [was] that people could be in the moment, and the moment could extend to hours, and that was appropriate and natural," she said. "I'm just as guilty of the next person of looking at my watch and worrying how I will get everything in, but there's something about these objects that absolutely makes me swoon."
Some materials actually show the transformation of people's concept of time, as industrialization allowed for mass-production. Ms. Katcher has collected many rewards of merit, tokens from a teacher to a student recognizing good work in a particular area. "There is an evolution, from the late 18th century through the 19th century," she explained. "It starts with something that's very detailed, and often exquisitely expressed in terms of a watercolor or a calligraphied card, or a paper that is written out by the teacher with a date and the names of the instructor and the student. Towards the mid-19th century, things become more standardized. Perhaps it's a partially printed reward of merit. There are lines left for the name of the instructor and the name of the pupil, but the meat of the award has already been printed. Then it evolves into something that's printed and there's very little individual work."
Ms. Katcher, who also collects furniture and paintings, has bought most of her works on paper, including valentines and friendship albums, by mail. The world of "ephemera," which these works fall into, is different from that of serious, big-bucks Americana, she said. "The people who are involved in that world are not the people you meet at the Winter Antiques Show."
