Editors' Foreword; Anna Moran, National College of Art and Design, Ireland and Sorcha O'Brien, Kingston University, UK Introduction: How Do I Love Thee? Objects of Endearment in Contemporary Culture; Victor Margolin, University of Illinois, Chicago Part 1: The Lives of Objects 1. I Love Giving Presents: The Emotion of Material Culture; Louise Purbrick, University of Brighton, UK 2. (S)Mother's Love, or, Baby Knitting; Jo Turney, Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University, UK 3. Sex, Birth, and Nurture unto Death: Patching Together Quilted Bed Covers; Catherine Harper, University of Portsmouth, UK Part 2: Projecting and Subverting Identities 4. Bringing Out the Past: Courtly Love and Nineteenth-Century American Men's Passionate Friendship Portraits; Elizabeth Howie, Coastal Carolina University, USA 5. The Genteel Craft of Subversion: Amateur Female Shoemaking in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteeth Centuries; Noreen McGuire, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK 6. Performing Masculinity through Objects in Post-War America: The Playboy's Pipe; Jessica Sewell, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China Part 3: Objects and Embodiment 7. Seduced by the Archive: A Personal Relationship with the Archive and Collection of Objects Pertaining to the London Couturier, Norman Hartnell; Jane Hattrick, University of Brighton, UK 8. Kitsch Enchantment, and Power: The Bleeding Statues of Templemore in 1920; Ann Wilson, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland 9. Magic Toyshops: Narrative and Meaning in the Women's Sex Shop; Fran Carter, Kingston University, UK Part 4: Mediating Relationships 10. Material Memories: Making of a Collodion Memory-Text; Christina Edwards, Aberystwyth, UK 11. The Problematic Decision to Live: Irish-Romanian Home-Making and the Anthropology of Uncertainty; Adam Drazin, University College London, UK 12. Designing Meaningful and Lasting User Experiences; Jonathan Chapman, University of Brighton, UK Index