Quezi

Mourning brooches. Victorian hand with flowers - photo by et sans. Georgian enamel grieving dove - photo by perfectjewels. (CC-BY - links at end of page)

If you were bereaved in the 1800s, your clothes and jewels had to be black for a period of mourning, the length depending on whether you were widow, daughter, sister etc. Apart from the usual gold and silver settings, mourning jewellery was made of black jet – a “stone” derived from coal -  onyx, black glass, aka French jet glass, black coral, black enamel, obsidian, or a jet substitute called vulcanite – chemically hardened rubber or “gutta percha”. Some of this jewellery was specifically for mourning, and suitable for nothing else – like the typically Victorian gloved hand photographed above, holding symbolic laurel and roses ready to be placed on a grave.

Brooches and lockets with portraits, or rings, necklaces, and other accessories made from the loved one’s hair were also popular choices for the bereaved. They could be worn for many years, not just for socially-required mourning.  Hair was braided and then treated like other flexible jewellery material. Alternatively it could be part of a decorative collage, or one simple curl mounted under glass on front or back of a brooch or pendant. Hair  jewellery is strongly associated with the Victorian peak in fashion for mourning dress, and mourning etiquette generally, but it had been in use well before, as had other types of jewellery commemorating the dead.

Like portrait brooches, hairwork was known before 1600. (See the plaited hair bracelet on Henrietta Maria’s right arm in a painting of 1632.)  These were not always mourning pieces. Miniature portraits on porcelain or ivory, or cut as cameos, could be mementoes of a living friend, separated by distance perhaps, or tributes to a living sweetheart or relative. Hair was used in much the same way, or even just as ornament without any underlying sentiment. Its use in memorial jewellery started in the late 17th century.

There were many other ways of expressing mourning through jewellery. The late Georgian enamel brooch in the picture has “I weep for his/her death” in French, and a pair of doves – lifetime mates – with one fallen to the ground.

Dates, initials, and names appeared alongside motifs like weeping willows, urns, or angels on 18th century mourning rings. Seed pearls were used to symbolise tears, while black and white enamel symbolised different degrees of grief. Designs for mourning rings were sometimes spelled out in wills, and rings were presented to funeral guests. The social implications were carefully considered, with the 128 rings given out at Samuel Pepys’ burial in 1703 being ordered in 3 grades of different quality.

See also: J. Aronson and M. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness, Yale UP, 2006

Photos with thanks to et sans and perfectjewels at flickr