Tokens of Love Project

Where the inspiration comes from:

The heart of this project lies with the historical tokens preserved at the Foundling Museum in London. The Foundling Hospital was an eighteenth-century London institution created to care for babies and young children whose parents, often through hardship, were unable to look after them.

When the Hospital opened in 1741, parents were required to leave something with their infant that could later be used as an identifier. These objects are known as the Tokens.

A token could be almost anything distinctive enough to describe: 

•  Hard objects such as coins, medals, buttons, thimbles or small metal tags.

•  Everyday items like playing cards, keys, seals or beads.

•  Written notes if a parent was able to write.

•  Or a small fragment of cloth, sometimes cut from the clothing the mother or the infant was wearing at the moment of parting, sometimes tenderly created at home in advance - these are the ones that inspired me most.

These objects were practical identifiers, not gifts or keepsakes. Their purpose was to ensure that, if circumstances improved, a parent could reclaim their child by recognising the object they had left.

Among the many tokens is a quieter group often called the soft tokens. These are the tiny cloth fragments, ribbons and stitched pieces. Although still official markers, they carry a certain tenderness simply because they were fabric, handled by human hands, often close to the body.

Although the original tokens belong to the eighteenth century, the theme of families separated by circumstance continues in the modern world. Around the globe, people are parted through long journeys, displacement, conflict, past adoption practices, mother-and-baby homes, and other situations in which families become scattered. This project does not focus on loss. Instead, it gathers the hopeful thread that runs through these stories. It honours connection, resilience, and the small human wish to be

remembered.