Across cultures and centuries, people have reached for charms to make life a little luckier. In France, these talismans became known as porte-bonheur—to “carry luck.” At once intimate and universal, they offered protection, prosperity, or love in the form of small, symbolic objects.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this tradition flourished in postcards, printed ephemera, and keepsakes. A four-leaf clover promised good fortune, a horseshoe guarded thresholds, a ladybug heralded blessings, a pig rooted out prosperity, while hearts, dice, anchors, and pansies spoke of love, chance, hope, and remembrance. Each image distilled centuries of folklore into a visual shorthand of optimism.