Art Deco
Art Deco (1920–1939) is the first jewellery epoch without a ritualised canon of mourning - shaped by geometric rigour, machine aesthetics and a decisive rejection of the sentimental mourning fashions of the nineteenth century; memorial jewellery becomes private, understated and formally absorbed into the general jewellery line rather than set apart as its own genre.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
Art Deco is the first jewellery epoch in Western European history to do without a mourning-jewellery genre of its own. With the rupture of the First World War (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)), the ritualised mourning tradition of the nineteenth century comes to an end; in its place stands an epoch in which mourning is privatised, individualised and formally absorbed into the general jewellery line. This shift is Art Deco's most significant contribution to the cultural history of memorial jewellery - it shapes everything that follows, right through to today's fingerprint and ash jewellery.
Cultural and historical context
Art Deco emerges in a period of sweeping change:
- The First World War (1914–1918) and its consequences: millions dead, social upheaval, the loss of bourgeois certainties
- High industrial modernity - automobiles, aeroplanes, skyscrapers, mass media, Hollywood
- Women's emancipation - suffrage (in many countries after 1918), paid employment, new lines in fashion (short skirts, trousers, the bob)
- The Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties - cultural liberation, new dance and music cultures, cocktail bars, worldly ways of living
- The rise of the Soviet Union and of fascisms - political polarisation, the loss of bourgeois security
- The Great Depression (1929) and the political radicalisation of the 1930s
In this setting the Victorian mourning ritual (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century) becomes definitively obsolete. After the industrialised mass death of the First World War it seems not merely outdated but positively unseemly - how can one mourn a single person with the ritualised pomp of widow's weeds when whole generations of young men have died in the trenches of Flanders? The answer of the Art Deco years: one mourns more privately, more discreetly, more invisibly.
Jewellery aesthetics
Art Deco develops a distinctive jewellery aesthetic governed by clear principles:
Geometric rigour. In place of the organic, flowing lines of Art Nouveau (see Jugendstil (Art Nouveau)), clear geometric forms dominate: rectangles, circles, triangles, trapezoids. The pieces read as architectural miniatures.
Symmetry. Art Deco pieces are usually strictly symmetrical - about an axis and about a point alike. This order was read as a counter-image to the disorder of the pre-war world.
Contrasting colours. Deep black (onyx) against brilliant white (diamond, platinum, pearl) becomes the signature combination. Alongside it come clear accents in red (coral), blue (lapis lazuli, sapphire) and green (emerald, jade).
Platinum and white gold. The rise of platinum that began in the Edwardian years (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) reaches its peak in Art Deco. Platinum permits finer, lighter-looking settings than gold and suits the geometric, modern aesthetic.
Diamonds. The diamond becomes the keystone of Art Deco. New cuts (baguette, square, trapezoid) are developed to serve the geometric idiom.
Machine aesthetics. Pieces take up motifs of industrial modernity - cogwheels, rails, skyscraper silhouettes, abstracted automobile and aeroplane forms.
Materials
Platinum - the leading material of the epoch. Harder than gold, white in lustre, ideal for filigree settings.
White gold (see Gold in Mourning Jewellery). A cheaper alternative to platinum, developed systematically from the 1920s onwards (gold with palladium or nickel as the bleaching metal).
Diamond - above all in the new geometric cuts (baguette, square, Asscher).
Onyx - black onyx as the contrast material to white diamond; a direct inheritance from Victorian mourning jewellery.
Coral, lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade - colour accents in geometric contrast.
Enamel on platinum or white gold. Black, white and red enamel as geometric accents.
Pearl (see The Pearl in Mourning Jewellery). Chiefly in multi-strand necklaces, less as a mourning symbol.
Traces of memorial jewellery
Although Art Deco has no mourning-jewellery genre of its own, memorial functions can be found in several pieces typical of the epoch:
Rings engraved inside. Wedding bands and inherited family rings continue to carry interior engravings with initials, a date of death or a short motto. The outside is purely decorative; the inside carries the memorial function (see Engraving and Inscriptions).
Onyx-and-diamond pendants. The geometric onyx-and-diamond pendants of the 1920s were in part made explicitly as mourning jewellery - a modern form that takes up the Victorian symbolism of black while rendering it in a geometric, modern line.
Photographic lockets. Rectangular or oval lockets in pared-back geometric form, often hinged and holding a small photograph inside. A direct line to the modern memorial pendant.
Memorial cigarette cases. An Art Deco speciality: cigarette cases with an engraved inscription, often given as a memorial gift to widowers or other male mourners. The interior frequently holds a small photograph pocket.
Military memorial pieces. For the soldiers killed in the First World War, numerous memorial pendants in military iconography appear: cross-pattée pendants (see Cross on the cross-pattée variant), anchor pendants (navy), eagle pendants (air force), regimental-crest pendants. These pieces are often very plain and usually bear no more than initials and a date of death.
Paired rings and mourning rings. Pairs of wedding bands in which one ring refers to the deceased partner - by engraved initials, for instance, or by a small black onyx cabochon set into the shank.
Regional schools
Paris (1920–1939). The most important jewellery school. Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Mauboussin and Lacloche Frères define classic Art Deco. Mourning functions are realised in discreetly engraved rings and pendants.
New York (1920–1939). Tiffany & Co., Black, Starr & Frost and Marcus & Co. translate French Art Deco into a somewhat more opulent American variant. Mourning pieces are made chiefly for the wealthy East Coast class.
Bauhaus / Germany (1919–1933). A reductionist variant of Art Deco with a clear geometric line. Naum Slutzky develops a Bauhaus jewellery line of his own. Mourning pieces here are extremely plain and inconspicuous.
Wiener Werkstätte (until 1932). A late phase of the Vienna Secession (see Jugendstil (Art Nouveau)) that increasingly takes up geometric lines. Josef Hoffmann continues to design memorial pendants in this late phase.
London (1920–1939). A more conservative variant of Art Deco; many pieces combine Art Deco geometry with English Edwardian elements. Mourning functions are realised in the English tradition of discreet interior engraving.
The social transformation of mourning
Three shifts define the mourning culture of the Art Deco epoch:
Privatisation. Mourning becomes a private matter. There is no longer a socially prescribed mourning dress code; each person mourns in whatever form seems individually appropriate.
Secularisation. Religious Christian mourning symbolism (cross, anchor, the triad of virtues) recedes. Memorial pieces are increasingly made without explicitly religious imagery - a shift that persists to this day and continues in modern memorial symbols such as the butterfly (see Butterfly).
Reduction. Mourning pieces are visually pared back - less symbolism, fewer inscriptions, fewer explicit mourning codes. Instead the jewellery reads as ordinary everyday wear that carries a specific memorial function only for its wearer.
Transition to modern memorial culture
Art Deco marks the decisive transition from the historical, ritualised mourning-jewellery tradition to the modern, private culture of memorial jewellery. Several innovations established in these years remain formative today:
- The memorial function placed in the interior engraving rather than in the exterior design
- A discreet, elegant form in place of explicit mourning codes
- Secular symbolism in place of explicit religious charge
- Personalisation through inscription rather than through mourning-specific material
- A double function: jewellery as everyday piece and as private memorial object
These shifts feed directly into modern memorial jewellery - from the ash pendant (see Ash Pendant) through the fingerprint pendant (see Fingerprint Pendant) to the memorial diamond (see Memorial Diamond). Today's mourning market operates in a world that Art Deco opened up.
Art Deco jewellery today
In the current market, Art Deco pieces form a significant collector and investment category. In a memorial-jewellery context they are used in several ways:
- Antique Art Deco pieces as family heirlooms with engraved dates of death - a direct memorial function
- Onyx-and-diamond pendants as a historicising modern form of mourning jewellery
- Art Deco-inspired modern memorial pendants with geometric outlines and an integrated ash capsule or fingerprint element
- Cigarette cases as memorial gifts in a discreet, modernised form
For mourners looking for memorial jewellery with a clear, geometrically elegant line - and wishing to keep their distance from the explicitly emotional sentimentality of Victorianism - the Art Deco aesthetic offers an attractive modern language of remembrance. It combines elegance with restraint and makes remembrance both private and wearable every day.
Questions about this entry
- Did Art Deco produce mourning jewellery at all?
Not as a genre of its own. The First World War (1914–1918), with its millions of dead, broke the ritualised mourning tradition of the nineteenth century (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901), The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century). The interwar years produced no new mourning-jewellery genre; instead, memorial pieces were either made as discreet personal pendants without any explicit mourning marker (a chain with a small photographic locket, a plain ring inscribed inside with a date of death) or handed down as pre-war family heirlooms. One important exception: memorial pieces for soldiers killed in the First World War were produced in distinct forms of their own (cross-pattée pendants, anchor pendants, regimental-crest pendants).
- Which Art Deco pieces are used as memorial jewellery today?
Several typical applications. Plain rings engraved inside with a date of death in geometric lettering - a restrained version of the classic mourning ring (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)). Onyx pendants in geometric gold settings - the Art Deco counterpart to Victorian black mourning jewellery. Photographic lockets with a pared-back outline (rectangular, or oval with clean lines) - forerunners of the modern memorial pendant. Cigarette cases with an inscription - an Art Deco speciality made as a memorial gift for widowers and other male mourners.
- Which mourning-jewellery convention does the Art Deco break establish?
The decisive shift: mourning becomes invisible. Where a nineteenth-century mourner was unmistakably identifiable by her black mourning toilette and its specific jewellery (see Mourning Necklace, Mourning Earrings), the Art Deco mourner wears modern, elegant pieces that are barely recognisable as mourning jewellery. This shift shapes the entire subsequent history of mourning jewellery down to the present: modern memorial pendants (fingerprint pendants, ash pendants; see Fingerprint Pendant, Ash Pendant) are likewise designed to read as ordinary everyday jewellery - the mourning function is known only to the wearer.
Further reading
- Art Deco Jewellery - Vivienne Becker (1987)
- Mourning Dress - A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (1983)
- Modernist Jewellery 1930–1960 - Marbeth Schon (2004)
Related entries
- Core conceptsMourning Jewellery
Mourning jewellery is body adornment that signals a death, binds the memory of a deceased person, or does both at once - since the 17th century a jewellery type in its own right, with a material language of its own.
- Core conceptsMemorial Jewellery
Memorial jewellery is jewellery that deliberately binds itself to one particular person - through an inscription, a photograph, hair, ashes or, the defining medium today, a digitally captured fingerprint.
- PeriodsThe Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)
The Edwardian era is the brief transitional period between the Victorian system of mourning jewellery and its final collapse in the First World War - a time of loosening codes, of refinement in materials (platinum, diamond) and of the first decided *weakening* of formal mourning obligation.
- PeriodsJugendstil (Art Nouveau)
Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau (1890–1910), is the last jewellery epoch with a mourning symbolism of its own before the rupture of the First World War - defined by floral, organically curving forms, mystical symbolism and a tendency to soften the strict Victorian mourning codes into a poetic, naturalistic language of remembrance.
- Symbols & motifsSkull (the Memento Mori Death's Head)
The skull is the sharpest and oldest memento mori symbol - a direct iconographic reminder of mortality and transience that became the dominant jewellery form in the Baroque and, after a long bourgeois interval, is present again today in modern memorial and fashion symbolism.
- Jewellery formsMourning Ring (Memorial Ring)
A mourning ring - also called a memorial ring - is a finger ring that carries the memory of a deceased person, usually in the form of an inscription, an image, a lock of hair or a fingerprint.
- Jewellery formsAsh Pendant
The ash pendant is a modern remembrance pendant with a tightly sealed hollow setting that holds a small quantity of a deceased person's ashes - today the fastest-growing jewellery form in the modern mourning and remembrance market.
- MaterialsGold in Mourning Jewellery
Gold is historically the most dominant carrier material of mourning and memorial jewellery - usually in muted alloys, often contrasted with black enamel or as a restrained gold setting around a dark principal material such as jet, onyx or a plait of hair.
- MaterialsSilver in Mourning Jewellery
In the 19th century silver was the popular mourning carrier material of the bourgeois middle class and is today the most widespread material of modern memorial jewellery - cheaper than gold, more precise to engrave than stainless steel and with a long symbolic tradition as a material of purity and of memento mori iconography.
- People & cultural historyMourning Rituals in the German-Speaking World
German-speaking mourning rituals differ perceptibly from the English court-mourning tradition - shaped by confessional division (Catholic / Protestant), middle-class sensibility, Biedermeier domesticity and an independent culture of memorial jewellery which carried different emphases in Vienna, Berlin and Munich according to region.
- Modern memorial jewelleryHair Pendant (Modern Memorial Jewellery)
The modern hair pendant carries a lock of the person remembered in a tightly sealed hollow setting at the throat - the direct technical continuation of the Victorian hairwork tradition, today made with modern workshop techniques and usually combined with a laser engraving or inscription on the outer face.