Knot of Love Earrings

The design of the Lover’s Knot, also known as the Endless Knot of Love, is very popular. In America, around 1760, it became customary to give handwritten and decorated letters to one’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. However, love knots could be provided at any time of the year. The suitor used careful handwriting, scrollwork decoration, watercolor illumination, and love messages that twisted around every labyrinthine loop.

Intricately drawn pen-and-ink love knots are brightly colored and usually include birds, hearts, tulips, angels, and minutely written love messages. The format features an intricate interlacing of scrollwork and strapwork, colorfully decorated in a style reminiscent of medieval manuscripts.

These love knots were primarily an expression of love, but were also used as marriage proposals. The suitor would deliver the love knot to his sweetheart’s doorstep. If she accepted his proposal of marriage, she kept the love knot. If, perchance, she rejected him, she returned the love knot to him. This was one way in which the romantic or bashful suitor, as the case may be, could say what was in his heart. The True Lover’s Knot is a labor of love. The suitor could use his ingenuity and loving care to create a manuscript that the sweetheart would carefully and painstakingly read. With plenty of time on hand, the youth of America in the late 1700s and early 1800s put their heart into their work.