The Story of Heart-Shaped Things
Yes, it is after Valentine’s Day! Yes, sometimes it can be Very Famous to experience feverish anxiety that delays life’s plans. Yes, it’s still the Month of Love! And when you’re Very Famous, it’s Valentine’s Day 24/7.
We worship a lot of heart-shaped things here—beds, jacuzzi tubs, etc—and because it feels important to know where our idolatry comes from, here is a primer of the invention of heart-shaped things.
The Heart-Shaped Tub
It’s a good time to be a heart-shaped tub. It’s not the ’60s and this isn’t a “sexual Disneyland,” but the aesthetics of couples resorts been newly revered by love-motel explorers like Margaret and Corey of A Pretty Cool Hotel Tour, artists like Aleia and Signe Pierce, and us!
The tub was invented by Morris Wilkins in 1963, five years after he co-founded the Cove Haven Resort for honeymooners in Pennsylvania. He never got a patent for the tub, which is why his other bathtub dream—the champagne-glass jacuzzi—is unique to Cove Haven, but heart-shaped tubs can be found all over.
Kyle Kuczma, Cove Haven’s PR coordinator, told us in a previous interview that there are a few origin stories for the tub. One is that Wilkins dreamed it up in the middle of the night, rushing downstairs to sketch a heart shape on the floor, and the other, told by the resort’s “Chief Excitement Officer” Phil Policare, is that Wilkins and his business partner were carrying a round hot tub down a flight of stairs. When they pushed in a flexible side of the tub to round a corner, they saw it resembled a heart.
A two-page spread in a 1971 Life issue showcased a soaped-up couple kissing in a tub. The accompanying article called it a “surfeit of affluent vulgarity” (ed’s note: yawn!) but the photo told everyone what to do, which was to find the nearest heart-shaped tub stat.
The Heart-Shaped Pizza
We’re not positive as to who made the first heart-shaped pizza, but it’s safe to say that if not the first, Chicago pizza chain Lou Malnati’s is at least one of the originals. A marketing manager for the family-run chain told CNN Money that the founder’s son (and Loyola University basketball coach), Rick Malnati, came up with the idea about 30 years ago. He first used a cookie cutter, then a heart-shaped pan, and the chain has now been shipping their frozen “love” pizzas since 1991.
We also tried to figure out when chains like Papa John’s and Pizza Hut started making them, but all we could find were headlines announcing that they were “back” but when did they begin!!!!???
The Heart-Shaped Bed
Once more, who knows!! We know who made the vibrating bed and the heart-shaped tub, but who married these two motel aesthetics together to create a novelty bed? A mystery! We read one account that Best Mattress founder Raymond Delaney, Sr., made a custom heart-shaped bed for Jayne Mansfield, however that bed isn’t to be found in our Pink Palace investigation—just a heart-shaped pool and a zillion other heart-shaped things.
The Heart-Shaped Box of Chocolates
Nobody knows for sure where the heart shape came from, but the heart-shaped box of chocolates is pretty easy to trace. Chocolatier Richard Cadbury invented the first (known) heart-shaped box of chocolates in 1861, shortly after creating “eating chocolates” made from the cocoa butter he extracted in the process of creating drinking chocolate. He decorated the box with Cupids and rosebuds, and the design—and the marzipan and chocolate ganache—connected with Victorian sensibilities about courtship and romance. The heavily adorned boxes could then be saved for memento-keeping after.
Around 40 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are sold in America for Valentine’s Day, and more than half of those are made by Russell Stover. The chocolate maker (which was actually founded by Stover’s wife, Clara) has 12 Kansas City artists who’ve designed every box and package for two decades.
The Heart-Shaped Candy
The original sayings printed on Necco sweethearts were more self-righteous than today’s two-word proclamations of “Text Me.” According to Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl: An Encyclopedia, two of the original sayings were: “Married in White, You Have Chosen Right” read one, and another, “How long shall I have to wait? Please Be Considerate.”
The conversation heart’s story begins with medicine. A Boston pharmacist named Oliver Chase invented a machine in 1847 that made lozenges for various ailments. Because they were partially made of sugar, Chase started making pure sugar lozenges, which led to his machine being considered the first candy machine in America. The lozenges morphed into the candy we know today as Necco Wafers.
The origin of the sweetheart candies is likely inspired by a popular candy at the time, cockles, a scallop-shaped candy that had a saying printed on rolled-up paper inside. In 1902, the lozenge became heart-shaped.
The Heart-Shaped Necklace
With the heart shape first popular towards the end of the Middle Ages, one of the first recorded instances of heart-shaped jewelry was in 1562. Mary Queen of Scots sent Queen Elizabeth a ring with a heart-shaped diamond, which at the time was a symbol of “friendship as well as goodwill.” Fast forward to Claire’s and their BFF section, and the sentiment’s still the same.
In the early 20th century, King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to be with socialite Wallis Simpson. He gave her a Cartier heart-locket bracelet, engraved with mathematician Blaise Pascal’s quote: “The Heart Has Its Reasons.”
The Heart-Shaped Red Sunglasses
Heart-shaped sunglasses appear to have become a thing in the 1950s. Though as early as 1936, one mysterious newspaper clipping said that “Odd-Shaped Eyeglasses Express Personality” with an accompanying image of a woman wearing heart-shaped glasses. They became inextricably connected to Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 adaption of Lolita, with Sue Lyon wearing them on the film’s poster.
As a Dazed article pointed out with a reference to the three laws of kitsch, Lana Del Rey has since honored the glasses as such with her line “Baby, put on heart-shaped sunglasses” from “Diet Mountain Dew”.
