Knot of Love

The design for the Lover’s Knot or Endless Knot of Love is very popular. In America, around 1760, giving handwritten and decorated letters to one’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day became customary. However, love knots could be provided at any time of the year. The suitor used careful handwriting, scrollwork decoration, watercolor illumination, and love messages twisting around every labyrinth 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 shows an intricate interlacing of scrollwork and strapwork, colorfully decorated in a style similar to 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 read painstakingly. With plenty of time on hand, the youth of America in the late 1700s and early 1800s put his heart into his work.