Painting

• But when words fail to express our feelings, lovers throughout history have turned to gifts.
• Whether given as part of a public romantic gesture, or in the quiet intimacy of a private moment, romantic gifts are a longstanding staple of romantic expression.
• But research shows that, if you really want to impress your sweetheart, jewellery and fashion accessories are the best options.

1. Sexy underwear, the Georgian way

• The corset’s predecessor, stays (fully boned laces bodices), were just a functional part of everyday dress for the Stuarts and Georgians, but they could still have romantic features.
• The busk was a long piece of wood, which slipped inside a channel at the front of the stays.

• Engraved with love poems, depictions of hearts, and sometimes even verses euphemistically referring to orgasms, these busks were often given as romantic gifts.
• Positioned between the breasts, the engraved rhymes often expressed jealousy for the busk, which got to intimately rest in the recipient’s cleavage.

2. Lovers’ eyes

Georgian lovers did not always conceal their love tokens in their underwear. Eye miniatures, also known as lovers’ eyes, were rings, brooches or pendants decorated with miniature paintings of a romantic partner’s eye. These were gifted between lovers as a wearable symbol of their love.
The Bible says that the eyes are the window to the soul, and the lover’s eye was considered an incredibly intimate form of portrait. Yet it was also very secretive and caused tantalising gossip. Much speculation ensued about who was wearing whose eye.

3. Lockets

• Early lockets often expressed religious devotion and familial connection, rather than romantic love.
• With the rise of mass manufacture in the 19th century, lockets became a cheaply available and widespread love token for the masses.

4. Hair jewellery

The practice of cutting a lock of your lover’s hair and wearing it in a locket close to your heart was historically widespread, but the Victorians took this trend even further.

• Hair jewellery – ornaments made from strands of human hair – was incredibly popular in 19th century Britain.
• While there were also commercial hair jewellery makers, some women crafted rings, bracelets and watch chains out of their lover’s hair at home.

5. Posey rings

Perhaps the most timeless of all wearable tokens of love is the posey ring. These simple gold bands, engraved with a romantic inscription, were consistently popular from the Medieval period. Their name comes from the French, poésy (poetry), referring to the words engraved inside.

• The inscriptions in these rings were often taken from published compendiums of sayings, such as The Mysteries of Love or the Arts of Wooing, published in 1658.
• Although it is doubtful that the wooden busk and hair-work jewellery will come back in fashion any time soon.

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Serena Dyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• BEIJING, Feb. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- This year's Spring Festival Gala, an annual celebration produced and broadcast by China Media Group (CMG), unfolded on the eve of the Spring Festival on Friday evening.
• As China's most-watched TV program, the gala has been an annual tradition since its first broadcast in 1983.
• It also incorporates cutting-edge technologies like extended reality (XR) and immersive stage interaction technologies to enhance the viewing experience.
• For instance, the project "Spring Festival Gala is waiting for you," inviting ordinary people who have become internet celebrities, has become a standout feature of this year's Spring Festival Gala.

• ~ The Leela Palace New Delhi celebrates three years of artistic affiliation with India Art Fair, with a showcase of true Indian hospitality~
  NEW DELHI, Feb. 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leela Palace New Delhi partnered with the prestigious India Art Fair for its 15th edition as the official Hotel and VIP Lounge Hospitality Partner.
• The Leela Palace New Delhi has been associated with the India Art Fair, the biggest fair experience of modern and contemporary Indian art in the world for the last three years to celebrate diverse forms of art, from traditional Indian craftsmanship to contemporary masterpieces.
• The Leela Palace New Delhi, has long held partnerships with luminaries in the arts and this unique partnership with the India Art Fair, underscores The Leela's unwavering commitment to excellence in hospitality and the seamless integration of art, crafted into unique guest experiences.
• Held in New Delhi, the India Art Fair took place at the NSIC grounds in Okhla from February 1 to 4, 2024.

• And even if some few have somehow survived, they are moth-eaten and in a state of decay, and remembered about as well as if they had never existed.
• By making the manuscripts into a book, he would preserve the knowledge they contained – but not the manuscript, not the artefact itself.
• He does not mention how difficult his Byzantine manuscripts were to read and transcribe, even for someone familiar with the language.
• Every manuscript is its own text, its own space of knowledge, and an irreplaceable part of our shared cultural histories.

Preserving the Past

• Our knowledge of the past, and the wisdom we can gain from it, is bound in material objects – whether manuscripts, paintings, ruined buildings or clay pots – that are decaying.
• What will we preserve of the past?
• We are lucky if we can now read a text in 50 manuscripts.
• Read more:
  Uncovering the mysteries of The Book of Kells – from myopic monks on magic mushrooms to superhuman detail

• Manuscript tourism became a popular activity for wealthy scholars like Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), whose collection became the core of the British Museum’s collection.
• Of course, many of these collectors simply stole or smuggled what they wanted from struggling monasteries in what are now Greece, Sinai and Israel.
• But their work made possible the rise of printed editions of classical and medieval works.
• Our modern editions of the Bible and the Iliad, for example, do not exactly match their underlying manuscripts.

Read more:
Dogs in the middle ages: what medieval writing tells us about our ancestors’ pets

Digital decay

• Even if we prefer the edited versions, printed books decay faster than manuscripts, and take up just as much space.
• Print does not solve the problem of preservation; it only postpones it.
• In the 20th century, digital scanning tools and computer-based storage seemed to offer a new kind of solution.

• Second, digital images are often in proprietary formats, meaning that without the library’s viewing software you cannot actually examine the manuscript.
• The digital format is still chained to its digital shelves in a private space.
• Third, as a recent cyber-attack on the British Library demonstrates, the digital space seems not to be safer than the physical one.
• The digital library space, with its proprietary viewing software and its specialised file formats, is now shuttered.

Conservation and accessibility

• Yet physical conservation comes at the expense of accessibility.
• We can, however, use advances in AI and computer technology to improve approaches to digital conservation and enable wider access to the uniqueness of individual manuscripts.
• To avoid digital decay, we need to devote the same attention to digital conservation as to material conservation.

• Images of manuscripts would then have a readable text and all the unique elements of the material original – its decorations and artistry, its errors and doodles.
• In this enhanced digital form, manuscripts could come to local museums, libraries and galleries, where they would be accessible to everyday visitors as well as specialists.
• But unlike him, we can now offer the experience of the manuscript as well as the text, and to a much wider audience.

Jonathan L. Zecher receives funding from the Templeton Religion Trust.