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In Memory Of: Victorian Mourning Jewelry and the Culture of Grief
Paperback
General World HistoryBritish HistoryJewelry
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Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 198
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.42 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A lock of hair beneath crystal. A ring inscribed with a name and a date. A brooch carved from black jet, worn against a widow's heart.
These objects were not curiosities. In Victorian Britain and America, they were the everyday tools of grief. They were made, worn, passed down, and understood by everyone who saw them.
In Memory Of tells the story of Victorian mourning through the jewelry that made grief visible.
When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria withdrew into a widowhood that lasted forty years. Her example turned mourning into a public ritual, and mourning jewelry into a defining feature of Victorian life. But the practice was older than Victoria. It grew from centuries of memento mori traditions, from Georgian mourning rings distributed through wills, and from a sentimental culture that placed emotion at the center of daily life.
This book traces that history from its origins to its decline. It examines the materials of mourning jewelry, including Whitby jet, woven hairwork, black enamel, and seed pearls. It decodes the symbols that appeared on brooches and rings: weeping willows, funeral urns, forget-me-nots, clasped hands. It explores the commercial infrastructure of the mourning trade, from jet workshops in Yorkshire to mourning warehouses on Regent Street. It considers the rules of mourning dress, the class dimensions of grief, the distinctive practices of American mourning after the Civil War, and the slow decline of elaborate mourning in the twentieth century.
Drawing on primary sources, museum collections, and scholarly research, In Memory Of treats mourning jewelry as serious material culture. It is a history of grief, memory, and the objects that kept the dead close.
Inside this book, you will discover:
- How mourning jewelry evolved from medieval memento mori to Victorian hairwork
- Why Whitby jet became the defining material of Victorian mourning
- What specific symbols meant, from the weeping willow to the clasped hands
- How hairwork was made, who made it, and why it mattered
- How class shaped the experience of mourning, from the wealthy to the working poor
- How American mourning practices differed from British ones, especially after the Civil War
- Why elaborate mourning declined in the twentieth century
This book is for readers who are interested in:
- Victorian history and culture
- Jewelry history and antique collecting
- Death studies and the history of mourning
- Material culture and social history
- The Gothic, the macabre, and the darker side of the nineteenth century
Fifteen historical illustrations document the mourning jewelry described in these pages, including jet brooches, hairwork wreaths, enamel rings, and American Civil War lockets.
If you have ever wondered what a lock of hair in a brooch was meant to say, or why the Victorians made an industry out of grief, this book offers an answer.
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