The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)

The Edwardian era is the brief and often underrated transitional period between the Victorian system of mourning jewellery and its final end in the First World War. Stylistically and culturally it is less independent than the epochs before and after it, but precisely in its transitional function it contains a shift of real importance to the history of jewellery: from matt black material to the light, bright, decorative object of mourning and remembrance.

Period and key events

The epoch is formally framed by two royal deaths:

• 22 January 1901 - the death of Queen Victoria. The Victorian age ends and her son Edward VII takes the throne. His own advanced age (sixty) and his more modern manner mark a cultural break.
• 6 May 1910 - the death of Edward VII. His son George V succeeds him; in the narrow sense the Edwardian era ends here.
• 28 June / 1 August 1914 - the outbreak of the First World War. In the broader sense the Edwardian Belle Époque ends at this point.

The most significant wave of mourning jewellery in the epoch is the death of Queen Victoria herself. Millions of mourning pieces were commissioned in the first weeks of 1901; it is the last great national wave of mourning in English history. Notably, most of these pieces are stylistically still late Victorian rather than Edwardian - the new epoch only develops a mourning style of its own over the following five to eight years.

Stylistic changes

Three central shifts define Edwardian mourning jewellery:

From matt black material to pierced filigree setting. The heavy matt black materials of the high Victorian years (jet, vulcanite, Berlin iron) lose their importance. In their place comes a light, frequently pierced filigree setting in platinum or white gold, into which small black accents are set (an onyx cabochon, a point of black enamel, a black pearl). The mourning piece changes from a planar to a linear object.

From memento mori code to decorative, elegant memorial object. The Victorian logic (matt black = signal of mourning obligation) is weakened. Edwardian mourning pieces are often hard to distinguish from love tokens and sentimental jewellery - a platinum filigree brooch with a small onyx centre and a diamond border can be a mourning piece or simply an elegant day-dress brooch. This ambiguity is deliberate; it corresponds to the loosening of formal mourning obligation.

From pictorial motif to geometric-floral ornament. The older mourning iconography (urn, weeping willow, anchor) recedes; in its place come geometric and floral pattern systems - laurel wreaths, acanthus scrolls, diamond rosettes, garland-style festoons. The mourning piece integrates stylistically into the general Edwardian jewellery canon rather than cultivating an idiom of its own.

Material

The Edwardian revolution in materials concerns above all two new principal carriers:

Platinum. Industrially available from the 1890s and the dominant premium material from 1900. Its properties: a cool white lustre, high strength, the possibility of extremely fine settings, and hypoallergenic wear. Platinum largely displaces Victorian yellow and rose gold; in the mourning segment it is the premium material par excellence.

Diamond in mosaic settings. Small diamonds (often eight-cut brilliants or rose cuts) are set in dense mosaic patterns on platinum - a technique that would not have been technically possible in gold. Characteristic are millegrain borders (tiny beads applied along the edge of the setting) and pierced à jour settings.

Onyx and black enamel remain important as signals of mourning, but now only in small quantities as an accent: an onyx cabochon at the centre of a diamond brooch, a black enamel border on a platinum brooch. The Victorian practice, in which the mourning piece was made of the black material, is replaced by one in which the mourning piece merely contains it.

Pearls - above all black (Tahitian) pearls and natural grey freshwater pearls - become important half-mourning materials. In daywear for mourning, pearl necklaces are standard equipment for half mourning.

Black enamel on platinum replaces the older black enamel on gold. Its character: on platinum the black reads cooler and sharper than on gold, and is optically bound more tightly to the dominant white surface.

Marcasite, cut steel, haematite - in cheaper pieces; all three give a dark, faintly glittering effect that suggests the expensive diamond mosaic without approaching its price.

Forms

Edwardian forms of mourning and memorial jewellery follow the general jewellery canon of the epoch:

The filigree brooch. The central form. A pierced platinum or white gold setting with a diamond mosaic and a small black accent. Usually 2 to 4 cm across. Worn on a day dress or evening gown.

The mourning necklace. Long, light platinum chains with small half-mourning pendants (an onyx drop, a black pearl, a small black enamel locket). Unlike the heavy Victorian mourning chain, the Edwardian version reads as fluid and light.

The photographic mourning locket. A form of undiminished importance (see Mourning Locket). A photographic locket in a light platinum or white gold mount, often with a diamond border or an enamel frame. Inside, a black-and-white albumen print or an early silver bromide photograph.

The mourning ring. Classic in form (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)) but rendered in Edwardian idiom: a platinum shank with a central black stone (onyx or black diamond) and a short inscription inside.

The garland-style brooch. A specifically Edwardian form - a garland-shaped brooch with diamond rosettes and acanthus scrolls, often with small black accents as a mourning signal.

The mourning pendant with a drop pearl. A classic half-mourning piece - a small filigree setting with a central grey or black drop pearl, worn on a fine platinum chain.

Court mourning codes in relaxation

The Victorian order of court mourning remains formally in force but is noticeably relaxed in Edwardian practice:

• Widows move into half mourning after twelve rather than twenty-four months more frequently
• The half-mourning phase becomes shorter and more individual
• Mourning for more distant relatives (grandparents, more distant siblings) is often reduced to a few weeks
• In progressive bourgeois circles young widows are encouraged to begin half mourning after as little as six months

This loosening is not visible everywhere - aristocratic circles close to the court remain strict, while the urban middle class relaxes markedly. The real break comes only with the First World War.

The photograph at the centre

The most important constant technique of personalisation is the photograph. In the Edwardian mourning locket the photograph is standard; the older daguerreotype has been replaced by the silver bromide print, which works at better resolution and with greater tonal depth.

Characteristic is the refinement of the photographic setting: small discs of rock crystal with a millegrain border, a plinth of enamel between photograph and setting edge, platinum frames rather than gold. The photograph is increasingly treated as an aesthetic element in its own right, not merely as a documentary likeness.

Continental European parallels

In France the Edwardian era corresponds to the Belle Époque (1890–1914). Parisian mourning-jewellery workshops of these years produce high-quality platinum filigree pieces with diamond mosaics and onyx accents - stylistically close to the English pieces, but often with a stronger relation to Art Nouveau and its vegetal line.

In German-speaking Europe the epoch overlaps with the Secession and Jugendstil. Mourning pieces from the Wiener Werkstätte (founded 1903) show a geometric, less naturalistic idiom; the mourning jewellery produced there is denser, more material and conceptually more rigorous than its English Edwardian counterparts. It nevertheless remains a small, exclusive genre.

In the United States the Tiffany workshop line gains importance; the specifically American form is the mourning locket with a diamond border and the filigree setting typical of Tiffany.

The end brought by the First World War

With the outbreak of war in August 1914 the Edwardian jewellery epoch effectively ends. Three factors:

1. Mass losses. The battles in Flanders, on the Somme and at Verdun produced death tolls that no Victorian or Edwardian logic of court mourning could accommodate. A widow required to mourn six to twenty-four months for every brother, uncle and cousin killed would have spent years in obligatory mourning.

2. Material scarcity. Platinum became a strategic war material (detonator caps, catalysts); its use in jewellery was banned or severely restricted in many countries. Diamond imports were interrupted.

3. Cultural upheaval. Grief for losses on this scale could no longer be expressed in the fine, decorative Edwardian forms. A new mourning iconography emerged - poppy pins, plain mourning bands, soldiers' identity discs - that had nothing left in common with the Edwardian jewellery system.

After 1918 no normative system of mourning jewellery survives. Memorial jewellery becomes an individual practice, no longer socially codified. Out of that shift, modern memorial jewellery develops over the twentieth century - situational, personal, without a prescribed order of phases.

Today

Edwardian mourning jewellery is now an established collecting field. Pieces with platinum filigree settings and diamond mosaics are regarded as technically and manually of exceptional quality; late Victorian to Edwardian transitional pieces (1895–1905) are often the most expensive mourning jewellery on the auction market.

In present-day memorial jewellery, Edwardian references occur above all at the technical level: platinum as the premium material for fingerprint pendants and memorial rings, millegrain borders as historicising details of setting, pierced filigree constructions as a deliberate reminiscence of Edwardian models. The iconographic and symbolic language of the Edwardian (laurel wreath, garland-style festoon) is taken up less often.

The greater legacy of the Edwardian era lies in its concept: that mourning jewellery need not be carried by mourning-specific materials but can also function as elegant, decorative, ambiguously worn jewellery. That conception - mourning jewellery suited to everyday wear and not immediately legible as mourning - shapes modern memorial jewellery to this day.