Many valentines are “really corny,” said lecturer Aimee England, holding up a card that showed a bird making a seasonally appropriate request: “Can you sparrow a little love?”
Some are simply mean: “Remember: Cupid rhymes with stupid!”
On the other hand, as England noted, before passing around samples from her collection of valentines through the ages, “The real reason I am into valentines is that I think they’re a little piece of people’s lives.”
Her point–made Saturday during a workshop at the Garfield Park Conservatory–was that the choice, or making, of valentines often show people in unguarded moments, in a time of fun, of impetuosity, of deep emotion.
In the use of valentines as a ritual of courtship, man shares the instincts of many other members of nature’s kingdom, England suggested. Birds, for example, might not shop the aisles of card stores to find suitable Valentine’s Day missives but, like humans, “they fill their nests with glittery, inedible, stimulating objects to impress their mates,” she said.
The lecture was part of a valentine show-and-make session, one of many events staged at the conservatory as part of its second annual Chocolate Fest, a tribute to the principal product of cacao trees growing under its steamy roof.
First, England talked history, noting that the idea of commercial valentine cards goes back to the mid-1800s when cheap postage became available in England and the U.S., providing a new outlet for sellers of fine papers.
Pop-up valentines–among them a sailing ship with “A Message of Love” on its billowing topsail–became popular late in the 19th Century, aided by the World’s Columbian Exposition, a showcase for the new thinking in lithography and clever forms of printing. Also noted was the work of the cardmaking Hall Brothers of Kansas City, starting in 1910.
“It was the dawn of the industrial age,” noted England, as she passed around several scrapbooks of vintage valentines that she keeps at Volume 1, a bookshop she runs in Hillsdale, in south-central Michigan. Along with rare books and records, a house specialty is what she called “collectible ephemera–travel brochures, vintage postcards, disposable things that people didn’t really keep. I am into rescuing them. They offer a unique look at the past.”
Valentines go back to the Middle Ages, some say, when the Duke of Orleans, captured by the English during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, sent a rhymed love letter on St. Valentine’s Day to his distraught wife in France.
Though ostensibly named for St. Valentine, a priest in Rome who was beaten with clubs and later beheaded when he refused to renounce his faith before cruel emperor Claudius II, the day owes more to the festival of Lupercalia which the Romans celebrated by putting the names of eligible young women into a box to be drawn by eligible men.
When pagan holiday names were replaced with the names of saints, St. Valentine’s Day it became.
Many valentine cards reflect themes, England noted.
She suggested that collectors focus on messages depicting cowboys, firemen, animals, military life, movie themes, cartoon characters or simple human gestures, such as holding hands. But, she implied, as she passed out supplies of colored paper, doilies, glitter, double-stick tape, stencil-cutters, scissors and rubber stamps with messages on them, the best valentines of all are hand-made.
“I’m not artistic, but I can stencil,” noted Verbena Kamp, who came with her husband, Everett, from Lockport for the Chocolate Fest events, including the workshop. “This came out really nice,” added Niki Williams, working at a table across the crowded room. “This is my favorite place. I grew up near here,” said Emelinda Perez, speaking of the conservatory while completing a valentine for her daughter, Lydia, who, in turn, was making one for her mother.
Not everything went smoothly.
“He’s the critic,” said Be Jaquez, speaking of her brother, Fred Jacques, who sat, commenting, while Be, as she herself conceded, “got glue and paper all over the place.” Meanwhile, Be’s sister-in-law, Raquel Jaques, was unfazed.
“Ooh, that’s nice. I like this one,” she said, upon completing her own effort.
“People really have a good time making these,” said teacher England, as her pupils wrapped up the afternoon and headed off, presumably for mailboxes. They left behind the sheets of white paper that had covered the work tables, many of them now emblazoned with colorfully lettered communiques, such as je t’aime and te quiero.
