Folk Hearts

For lovers of Americana, for lovers of hearts and things antique and endearing, and for lovers -- a celebration in 150 photographs, 120 in full color, of the heart motif in American folk art from 1660 to 1880. Here are hearts embellishing everything from a family tree to a face-powder box, from samplers to scrimshaw, from weather vanes to valentines . . . the heart motif in American country furnishings, folk crafts, textiles, sculpture, kitchen implements, and the countless varieties of love tokens, from a nineteenth-century whalebone busk (made by a sailor and intended for a lady's corset) to a watercolor "Puzzle purse" (when open, it reveals a man picking a heart from a tulip tree). Here are hearts painted, incised, carved, and sculpted - hearts on footwarmers (to be filled with hot coals or a warm brick); hearts on bedsteads, walking sticks, hatchets, on a child's stirrup, a tavern sign, an embroidered pocket; hearts on snuff boxes and knife boxes and boxes for dominoes, on bookplates, pin cushions, tombstones, Bride's quilts, butter molds and sugar molds and maple sugar molds, on woolwinders and hooked rugs, footstools and mirrors, mourning pictures and bootjacks, pie crimpers and ditty boxes...and a portrait, probably from Boston, of an esteemed fireman wearing suspenders decorated with hearts. Captions and commentary complete this beautiful album of folk hearts in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century America, celebrating the heart and all its messages of true feeling - courage, friendliness, tender courtship, fidelity, and romantic devotion. This description may be from another edition of this product.