Devotional card, French or Belgian, ca. 1820, with a stylized flower worked in dyed straw in red, pink and gold, with a straw stem and leaves, mounted on a circular support. Number 14 of the group of hand-made devotional cards from the same collection. Condition. Measurement.

Some of these early nineteenth-century devotional cards were made as canivets, so called after the small knife used to cut their intricate patterns. Cloistered nuns made them to support their convents and charities (such convent work is also known as Klosterarbeiten). Entirely hand-cut and painted, they were the precursors of the machine-made lace-paper holy cards of later generations.