A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to participate in a one day workshop supported by the ARC History of Emotions called ‘Romantic Rituals: Making Love in Europe, c. 1600 to the Present‘. By coincidence there were actually four of us who were focusing on the material culture of romantic love from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries – from valentines gifts to mourning jewellery.

I of course spoke about busks and romantic love from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries!

13717486_10157141696510392_4553903368644245883_o — My busk reconstruction (left), based on an original seventeenth-century French busk (right) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The organisers of the workshop, Sally Holloway and Katie Barclay, have written a fantastic summary of the workshop proceedings. If you’re interested you can read it below!

https://historiesofemotion.com/2016/09/20/the-rituals-of-romantic-love/?platform=hootsuite