The Georgian Era (1714–1837)

The Georgian era is the birth period of modern mourning and memorial jewellery. Forms of mourning jewellery existed before it - Renaissance memento mori rings, Baroque skeleton pendants, the medieval posy ring - but they were symbolic and generic: a skull, an inscription, a motto. In the eighteenth century mourning jewellery becomes individual. It refers to a particular deceased person, named and biographically graspable. This shift from a general reminder of death to the commemoration of a specific person is the cultural achievement of the Georgian era - and the precondition of all Victorian and modern mourning jewellery.

Period and political framework

The English reckoning comprises:

• George I (1714–1727) - the Hanoverian succession in England
• George II (1727–1760) - the middle of the eighteenth century
• George III (1760–1820) - the longest reign, running parallel to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars
• George IV (1820–1830) - the Regency phase (during George III's mental illness, 1811–1820) and his own short reign
• William IV (1830–1837) - the transition to the Victorian era

In German-speaking Europe this span corresponds to the Late Baroque, the Rococo, Neoclassicism and early Biedermeier (see Biedermeier (1815–1848)). In terms of jewellery history the Georgian period divides into two halves: before 1780 Baroque and Rococo idioms dominate; after 1780 Neoclassicism prevails, with a strong reliance on the antique iconography of urns, weeping willows and genius figures.

Sentimental jewellery as the leading form

The central Georgian innovation in jewellery is sentimental jewellery (see Sentimental Jewellery) - pieces that carry feeling: love, friendship, grief, remembrance. Three techniques are paradigmatic:

Sepia hair painting (see Sepia Hair Painting). Widespread from about 1770. On a small plaque of ivory, a minute composition is painted using chopped hair as pigment together with ink - usually a weeping willow above an urn, sometimes a mourning genius figure, sometimes an inscription in Latin or English. The plaque is then set into a locket, a ring or a brooch.

The lover's eye (see Lovers' Eye). Widespread from about 1785. A single painted eye of the beloved or deceased person on ivory, set into a ring or pendant. Giving the eye independent iconographic standing is a genuinely Georgian invention; the genre peaks between 1790 and 1830.

The miniature portrait on ivory (see Miniature Painting on Ivory). Already established in the late seventeenth century, it becomes in the Georgian era the standard means of depicting a specific person in jewellery. A small painted portrait sits in a locket or ring and can function as a token of love, of remembrance or of mourning.

To these are added hairwork (woven locks, mosaic patterns in hair) and inscribed pieces (posy rings with mottoes engraved inside - see Posy Ring).

Material and workshop

The Georgian palette of materials differs markedly from the Victorian:

• Gold (usually 18 to 22 carat) - the central choice of carrier material
• Silver - in more vernacular pieces, often gilded
• Ivory - the standard support for the miniature portrait, the lover's eye and sepia hair painting
• Rock crystal - as a transparent cabochon protecting hairwork and miniatures
• Hair - as pigment (chopped, in sepia painting), as woven work (plaited), and as the contents of a hollow setting (a lock under glass)
• Diamond and small coloured stones - as a frame or accent, often table- or rose-cut
• Enamel - black, white, royal blue; above all in the late Neoclassical style

Striking is the absence of the deep black materials that would define the Victorian mourning system. Jet jewellery does exist in the Georgian period (chiefly from Whitby) but plays a marginal role. Berlin iron appears only in 1813, vulcanite only after 1840. Black enamel is used, but mostly as an accent beside gold and ivory rather than as a dominant surface.

Court mourning taking shape

The order of court mourning that becomes a codified norm in the Victorian age has its origins in the Georgian era. Three markers are important:

• George II / Caroline (1737) - the death of Queen Caroline leads to an unusually extensive period of court mourning; the first standardisations of mourning dress at the English court.
• George III / Charlotte (1818) - the death of Queen Charlotte and the court mourning of her daughter-in-law Caroline of Brunswick shape the stylistic elements later adopted by Queen Victoria.
• George IV / Princess Charlotte (1817) - the early death of the heir presumptive, Princess Charlotte, sets off a nationwide wave of mourning; jewellery workshops produce thousands of memorial pieces bearing her name and date of death. It is the first mass mourning-jewellery event of the industrial age and is often seen as the forerunner of Victorian mass production.

Iconography

Georgian mourning iconography is grounded in Neoclassicism. Its most important pictorial elements:

• The urn as a quotation from antiquity - usually with draped cloth (see Urn)
• The weeping willow as a naturalistic symbol of grief (see Weeping Willow)
• The mourning genius figure - a female or angelic form in antique dress, leaning against the urn
• The anchor as a symbol of hope (see Anchor)
• The forget-me-not from about 1800, marking the transition to Biedermeier (see Forget-me-not)
• Inscriptions in Latin (In memoriam, Hodie mihi, cras tibi) or in the English sentimental idiom (Not lost but gone before)

Characteristic is a delight in combination: a single piece often unites urn, weeping willow, genius figure and inscription in one composition. The Victorian reduction to pure material (matt black jet with no imagery at all) is still unknown in the Georgian period.

Sensibility as cultural context

Georgian practice in mourning and memorial jewellery expresses a broader cultural movement: sensibility (German Empfindsamkeit, French sensibilité). In literature (Sterne, Rousseau, Goethe), in painting (Greuze, Reynolds) and in social conduct, the idea takes hold from the middle of the eighteenth century that feeling - tears, longing, grief, compassion - is a central value and may be shown openly.

Sentimental jewellery is the material answer to that culture. Wearing a sepia hair painting containing a lock of a dead sister's hair at the throat is not sentimentality in any pejorative sense but a highly codified expression of feeling - and thus standard in the literary bourgeois and aristocratic circles of the late Georgian years.

This cultural grounding explains why Georgian sentimental jewellery does not dissolve into the logic of court mourning: it is private, not public; individual, not representational; oriented towards feeling rather than status. The Victorian system of mourning jewellery would invert all three poles - and it is precisely in that inversion that one sees how independent Georgian practice was.

Transition to the Victorian

With the death of William IV in June 1837 and the accession of the eighteen-year-old Victoria, the Victorian era begins. The transition is gradual - the first Victorian mourning pieces (1837–1845) are still Georgian in style: ivory miniatures, sepia hair painting and lover's eyes remain in circulation.

The genuine Victorian stylistic revolution comes only with the death of Prince Albert in 1861. It shifts the material of mourning from gold and ivory to jet and onyx, extends the phases of mourning from a few months to several years, and reduces the iconography to the matt black surface of the material itself. Georgian pictorialism gives way to Victorian materiality (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)).

Today

Georgian sentimental jewellery is today both a collecting field and a conceptual model. In the present memorial-jewellery market two references stand out:

• Revivals of the lover's eye - small workshops paint watercolour eyes on ivory substitutes and set them, in historicising fashion, into a gold ring or pendant
• Reconstructions of sepia hair painting - very rare commissions to specialised workshops, often as a deliberately historicising gesture for particular occasions

The greater legacy of the Georgian era, however, lies in its conceptual inheritance: the idea that mourning jewellery should commemorate a particular, named, biographically concrete person is a Georgian one. Every modern fingerprint pendant stands in that tradition.