Victorian Die-Cut Girl with Strawberry Basket Greeting Card

Utterly self-satisfied and deeply suspicious, this cherub in a frilly green dress and matching bonnet lugs a wicker basket overflowing with what are either enormous strawberries or the beating hearts of her enemies — the scale is genuinely unhinged, the fruit nearly as wide as her torso. She's smiling, and it's the smile of someone who knows exactly what she's doing, standing in her little black mary janes on a patch of dirt with 'Love's Offering' scripted beneath her feet like a confession. The heart-shaped red fruits nestled among small dark flowers at chest height were absolutely intended to be innocent, and yet here we are, a hundred and twenty years later, deeply uncomfortable about a basket of produce.