Victorian Handshake Greeting Card with Shamrocks & Pink Flowers

There's an earnest, almost ceremonial solemnity radiating from this handshake—two disembodied hands emerging from partial sleeves (one lacy, one buttoned) shaking with the gravity of a business merger, all while drowning in an oval wreath of pink heather-like flowers and aggressively oversized four-leaf clovers. The ring on the lace-cuffed hand suggests this isn't just a friendly greeting but possibly a betrothal, which makes the whole 'just the hands, no bodies' aesthetic choice considerably more unsettling. Victorian greeting card designers apparently decided that the human torso was an unnecessary distraction from the real emotional action happening at wrist-level, and honestly, who among us can argue.