Friday, October 1, 2010

Mourning Jewelry

I stumbled across an interesting site (http://www.artofmourning.com) and discovered a very intriguing subject - to me at least:  mourning jewelry.  Now, I know it existed and I knew the basics of the whole mourning process, but I never put any thought into it before.

Basically, after a loved one passed away, the people affected would go into mourning.  There were specific guidelines which you had to follow - that were more constricting to women than men - about how you dressed, social activities, etc.  This was really made popular by Queen Victoria after her husband, Prince Albert, died.  Now I am not going to really go into detail about that whole process, but focus more on the jewelry.  Oh, I should mention that I really only looked into the norms of mainly the Victorian era.



Typical pieces were represented - necklaces, earrings, rings, brooches - but they were not designed in a usual manner, although still fashionable.  Skulls were a very popular theme for rings.  They were sometimes accompanied by worms, serpents or urns.  And actually, mourning rings were used as a social status item.  They were typically made by the grieving family and passed out at the funeral.

The materials to construct the special jewelry varied.  Sometimes, it was made of jet, a fossilized driftwood that was black in color.  This matches the black dress that was characteristic of the mourning process.  Another popular material to use was hair.  They either got the locks from the actual cadaver or from a jeweler that specialized in constructing hair jewelry.  It was accepted because it was part of the person that did not reflect the death.

When I read this, it didn’t seem like too big of a deal.  I assumed that they just put it in a locket - which some did - or something of that nature.  But that’s not the entire case.  They actually made jewelry out of largely hair!  It seemed very intricate and detailed.



As I was looking at pictures of the pieces, I noticed how much they resembled some of today’s jewelry.  They seemed fashionable.  Especially with the skulls, because that seems to be a big trend in clothing and accessories.  I found it intriguing that popular accessories from the 1800’s could be viewed in the same light 200 years later.  Granted they would be used for completely different reasons.

I realize that clothing trends seem to go in loops.  (Straight legged jeans, leggings that were popular in the 80’s are once again in style today.)  I wonder if that is the same case for jewelry.  Do different cultures’ adornments fads go “in loops?”  How many years does it take?  Is it as common among men as it is women?

All of these I’ll leave for another time, but I must be done for now…

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