Page 418 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

412 History and Science of Knots

in the True Love phenomenon. I wish to mention two examples and take up
part of a discussion initiated by Hjalmar Ohrvall.
The first example is a 5 part and 4 bight Turk's Head diagram, which
appeared on a Valentine card dated 1741 and made by one Geo Sherwood
(Fig.8). It came equipped with the little poem [31]:

There in Knot crosses in Store
But in True Love there Many more

Fig. 8. Geo Sherwood's Valentine motive
The second example occurs on an 1820 German Neujahrsbrief from Zittau
[36].It shows the patterns which is illustrated in Fig. 9. It was a custom in
several European countries when making a call on New Year's Day to leave
one's card with a written message conveying compliments of the season. About
the 1760's, mainly in Germany and Austria, New Year cards were available
with a printed message often in verse and romantic in style. From these
emanated the Freundschaftskarten , which resembled the Valentine cards of
the next century. There are many beautiful examples of such cards by Danish
and German artists [37].
It is remarkable that these relatively complicated knots come to have this
functionality. Hjalmar Ohrvall conducted the first comprehensive study of the
True Love Knot phenomenon and found several interesting results. In the
Swedish language Valknut is a knot name. At the Swedish Academy's library
there is a manuscript for a dictionary by Schultze (ca. 1755). The entry about
the valknut reads [36]: