The Victorian Era (1837–1901)
The Victorian era is the heyday of mourning jewellery - a period of more than sixty years in which court mourning codes, industrial mass production, new materials (jet, vulcanite, Berlin iron) and Queen Victoria's personal widowhood combined to produce a system of public and private mourning visibility without precedent in European history.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
In the popular understanding of mourning jewellery, the Victorian era is the historical standard. When collectors today speak of "mourning jewellery", they usually mean Victorian pieces. When antiquarian dealers catalogue mourning jewellery, Victorian is the most frequent category. And when modern workshops design historicising mourning pieces, in more than nine cases out of ten they reach for Victorian models. This dominance is no accident - it rests on the combined effect of political, economic and cultural factors that coincided in no other century with such density.
Period and phases
The Victorian era nominally spans the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). Stylistically it divides into three phases:
Early Victorian (1837–1860)
Still Georgian in style. Sentimental jewellery with sepia hair painting and miniature portraits remains in circulation. Gold and ivory dominate. The court mourning codes begin to consolidate but have not yet reached their later severity. Important markers: the death of Victoria's mother (1861, which triggered the transition) and the opening of the Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851), with its first large-scale display of mourning jewellery.
High Victorian (1860–1880)
The canonical phase of mourning jewellery. The death of Prince Albert in December 1861 begins Victoria's lifelong widowhood and makes mourning jewellery the standard at court. Whitby jet becomes the gold standard among mourning materials (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast). Berlin iron from the Prussian foundries, vulcanite from English workshops and French jet (black pressed glass) from Paris flood the middle-class market. Brooch, ring and locket are the three dominant forms. The order of phases (deep mourning, second mourning, half mourning) becomes a social obligation.
Late Victorian (1880–1901)
The first relaxations. Half-mourning materials (amethyst, moonstone, matt silver) gain importance; the second and third phases are shortened in bourgeois practice. Stylistically, mourning jewellery opens to the emerging Art Nouveau - curving lines, naturalistic plant ornament, lighter gold settings. Despite the loosening, the formal code of mourning obligation remains binding until 1901.
Material
The Victorian revolution in materials is the central change of the epoch in jewellery-historical terms. Unlike the Georgian period before it, with its gold and ivory, the Victorian mourning phase is dominated by matt black materials:
Whitby jet - the gold standard. A fossilised hardwood from the cliffs of Whitby in Yorkshire which, when polished, shows a deep, warm, faintly velvety black surface. At their height the Whitby jet workshops employed more than 1,500 cutters and carvers (see Whitby Jet).
Vulcanite (ebonite) - vulcanised rubber, the inexpensive mass-market substitute for jet. Shaped by pressing, often with elaborate reliefs (see Vulcanite (Ebonite)).
French jet - black pressed glass from Paris and Bohemia; technically not jet at all but glass. Glossier than jet and harder, but more brittle. The cheapest of the mass materials (see French Jet).
Berlin iron - finely cast, burnished iron from the Prussian foundries. Originating in the Wars of Liberation (1813: Gold gab ich für Eisen), it serves in the Victorian era as a specifically Prussian mourning variant (see Berlin Iron).
Black enamel on gold - the highest-quality variant. Black enamel fused in several layers over a gold ground, often with gilt inscriptional capitals (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)).
Onyx - the glossy black chalcedony, above all in the second phase of mourning (see Onyx).
Hair - as pigment in sepia painting, as woven work in mosaic brooches and rings, as a lock in a hollow setting. Hairwork reaches its widest circulation in the Victorian era (see Hairwork).
Court mourning codes
The formal order of court mourning is the defining institution of Victorian mourning jewellery. It governs:
Duration. For a widow after the death of her husband: 24 months. For parents after the death of an adult child: 12 months. For children after the death of a parent: 12 months. For siblings: 6 months. For grandparents or more distant relatives: 3 to 6 months. For very distant relatives or close friends: 6 weeks.
Phases and materials.
- Deep mourning (the first phase, 12 months for a widow): matt black materials only (jet, vulcanite, Berlin iron, black enamel). No lustre, no visible gold, no gemstones. Clothing of matt black crape.
- Second mourning (the second phase, 9 months for a widow): glossy black permitted (onyx, French jet), gold settings allowed, along with black pearls and small inscribed lockets. Clothing of smooth black fabric.
- Half mourning (the third phase, from 3 to many months for a widow): half-mourning materials - amethyst, moonstone, pale pearls, matt silver. Clothing in mauve, violet, grey and half-black.
The canon of forms. Mourning ring, mourning brooch and mourning locket are the three central pieces, supplemented by mourning earrings (a smaller version of the brooch design), the mourning bracelet (multi-part, often with hair mosaic) and the mourning necklace (long, frequently with an integrated locket).
Bequest pieces. Wealthy testators left mourning jewellery to funeral guests by will - mourning rings with engraved initials, smaller mourning pendants. In the English system a single funeral could distribute up to a hundred pieces.
Queen Victoria as the model for mourning jewellery
The queen's personal widowhood is the most important cultural amplifier of the Victorian mourning-jewellery system. After the death of Prince Albert on 14 December 1861, Victoria wore nothing but black until her own death in 1901 - forty years. Her obligations as a widow became a cultural norm:
- Black crape clothing at every public appearance
- A widow's cap with long streamers
- Several mourning pendants relating to Albert - one of them containing a lock of his hair
- Daily wear of a mourning ring bearing Albert's date of death
- The physical preservation of his bedroom, his daily routine and his wardrobe over forty years
The effect on the jewellery industry was enormous. Between 1860 and 1875 the Whitby workshops multiplied their workforce tenfold. Vulcanite pressing works were founded in Birmingham and Vienna. Berlin iron foundries expanded their mourning lines. The mourning warehouse - a department store specialising in mourning goods - appeared in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and New York.
Regional variants
England. Whitby jet dominates; photographic lockets with daguerreotypes and later albumen prints; hairwork as mosaic and weaving. The English tradition emphasises the inscribed date of death and the bequest function (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)).
France. French jet (pressed glass) as a mass product; black enamel on gold in the premium segment; bijoux de deuil with decorative, vegetal ornament. More oriented towards style than inscription.
German-speaking Europe. Berlin iron as a Prussian speciality (see The Berlin Iron Manufactories); black enamel and gold brooches; and, in the transition out of Biedermeier, sepia hair painting still. A bourgeois mourning ritual with confessional colouring (more restrained among Protestants, more ornamental among Catholics).
North America. Imported English and French pieces; domestic workshops in Boston, Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island; a specifically American version of the hair mosaic. Vulcanite and vermeil (gilded silver) were more widespread than in Europe because Whitby jet was harder to obtain.
Russia and Eastern Europe. Heavy black enamel jewellery with Orthodox iconography (crosses, emblems of saints); dates of death inscribed in Cyrillic; an independent court mourning tradition at the St Petersburg court.
Iconography
Victorian mourning iconography is more conservative than the Georgian. Its most important pictorial elements:
- The urn as the central mourning emblem (see Urn)
- The weeping willow as a naturalistic symbol of grief, often above the urn (see Weeping Willow)
- The anchor as a symbol of hope and of Christ (see Anchor)
- The forget-me-not as a symbol of remembrance, above all in half mourning (see Forget-me-not)
- The ouroboros (serpent) as a symbol of eternity, often as a ring (see Serpent (Ouroboros))
- Inscribed emblems - In Memoriam, Asleep in Jesus, Not lost but gone before, initials with a date of death
The Victorian reduction to the pure black surface of the material itself - a matt black jet brooch with no imagery at all - is the epoch's most radical iconographic gesture: the renunciation of all symbolism as a symbol of absolute loss.
End and dissolution
The Victorian era ends formally on 22 January 1901 with the death of the queen. The immediate consequence was a nationwide boom year in mourning jewellery, with millions of pieces commissioned - the last great surge of mourning jewellery in history.
The Edwardian era follows (1901–1910, see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) and relaxes the Victorian system considerably. The real break, however, comes in 1914 with the First World War. Losses on the scale of its battles could no longer be accommodated within the logic of Victorian court mourning - a widow required to observe strict mourning for six to twenty-four months after every brother, uncle and cousin killed would have spent years in deep mourning. The system collapsed not through modernisation but through sheer overload.
What remains is the Victorian vocabulary of mourning jewellery: the black materials, the specific forms, the techniques of personalisation. They survive as a collecting field and as a historicising frame of reference - to this day.
The Victorian legacy in modern memorial jewellery
Contemporary memorial jewellery is not directly Victorian - it has no court mourning codes, no order of phases, none of the heavy matt black materials. But it shares three basic principles with the Victorian system:
- Proximity to the body - the piece is worn on the body, not displayed in a cabinet
- Personalisation - the piece refers to one particular deceased person, named and biographically concrete
- Incorporation of substance - the piece contains something of the body (hair, ashes, a fingerprint)
What the Victorian era achieved in the nineteenth century with a hollow setting for hair and a photographic locket, the modern fingerprint pendant achieves in the twenty-first with laser engraving and a hollow chamber for ashes. The technical language has changed; the cultural grammar is the same.
Questions about this entry
- Why is the Victorian era so dominant in mourning jewellery?
Three factors converge. Political: Queen Victoria's forty years of widowhood (1861–1901) made mourning jewellery the standard at court and thus a model for society as a whole. Economic: industrialisation made matt black materials (Whitby jet, vulcanite, French jet) and stamped-sheet production possible, so that mourning jewellery became affordable to broad sections of the middle class for the first time. Cultural: the bourgeois mourning ritual, with its fixed order of phases, was a code of social obligation that no one could escape.
- What are the three phases of mourning?
Deep mourning (roughly the first year): matt black materials only, no lustrous accents, no visible gold. Second mourning (the transition during the second year): glossy black permitted (onyx, French jet), gold settings allowed, along with pearls and small inscribed emblems. Half mourning (often many years): muted half-tones - amethyst, moonstone, mauve, matt silver. The duration of each phase was firmly codified according to degree of kinship.
- How do English and continental Victorian mourning jewellery differ?
The English is primarily Whitby jet and the photographic locket, with a date of death and a bequest function. The French is black enamel on gold, plus French jet as a mass product, and is more decoratively oriented. German and Austrian work centres on Berlin iron as a Prussian speciality, alongside black enamel on gold and, in the transition out of Biedermeier, sepia hair painting. Russian and Central European work runs to heavy black enamel jewellery with Orthodox iconography.
- When does Victorian mourning jewellery come to an end?
Formally with the queen's death in 1901, in reality some years earlier. From the 1880s the strict codes begin to relax; the Edwardian era (1901–1910) introduces markedly lighter, more decorative forms. With the First World War (1914–1918) and its mass losses the entire formal system of mourning collapses - after which mourning jewellery still exists, but no longer as a normative, socially binding system.
Further reading
- Death Becomes Her - A Century of Mourning Attire - Jessica Regan (2014)
- Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (2009)
- The Power of Adornment: Personal Mourning Jewellery - Sarah Nehama (2012)
- Hair Jewellery - Mourning and Sentimental - Helen Sheumaker (2008)
- Victorian Jewellery - Margaret Flower (1973)
Related entries
- Core conceptsWidow's Jewellery
Widow's jewellery is the graduated mourning jewellery worn by widows in the 19th century according to a strictly codified plan of court mourning - from deep matte black to half-mourning lilac, each phase with its own materials and its own formal language.
- 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 Georgian Era (1714–1837)
The Georgian era spans the reigns of the four kings George I to George IV and of William IV in Britain. In mourning jewellery it is the epoch in which sentimental jewellery was invented - sepia hair painting, the lover's eye, the miniature portrait on ivory, and the posy ring in transition to the memento mori ring.
- PeriodsBiedermeier (1815–1848)
Biedermeier is the German-speaking mourning-jewellery epoch between the Congress of Vienna and the revolution of 1848 - a bourgeois, introverted period of forget-me-nots, Berlin iron and hairwork mosaic, with an understanding of mourning jewellery oriented more towards the family and the private sphere than towards the court.
- 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.
- MaterialsJet (Gagate)
Jet - German *Gagat* - is a fossil, deep-black material formed from petrified wood which in the nineteenth century became the very epitome of Victorian mourning jewellery.
- MaterialsWhitby Jet
Whitby jet is jet from the North English coastal town of Whitby - by far the most important deposit worldwide in the 19th century and the gold standard of Victorian mourning jewellery.
- MaterialsOnyx
Onyx is a black variety of chalcedony which, in Victorian mourning jewellery of the second stage of mourning, formed the lustrous, polished counterpart to matt jet.
- MaterialsVulcanite (Ebonite)
Vulcanite is hardened, black-dyed natural rubber - an industrial invention of the 1840s which found wide use in Victorian mourning jewellery as an inexpensive alternative to jet.
- MaterialsFrench Jet
French jet is a misnomer - not jet at all, but deep black pressed glass which, from the 1860s onwards, conquered the Victorian widow's-mourning-jewellery segment as inexpensive mass-produced ware.
- MaterialsBerlin Iron
Berlin iron is cast, black-burnished iron jewellery of Prussian manufacture - created in the context of the Wars of Liberation of 1813 and, over the following decades, become an emblem of patriotic mourning culture.
- MaterialsBlack Enamel (Schwarzemail)
Black enamel is a glass frit coloured with manganese oxide and fused in thin layers onto gold or silver - the most expensive variant of Victorian mourning jewellery and the preferred carrier ground for inscriptions.
- Techniques & craftHairwork
Hairwork is the collective term for all techniques in which human hair becomes the carrier material of a piece of jewellery - from a single lock beneath rock crystal to finely plaited hair weaving in the Victorian showpiece manner.
- Techniques & craftEngraving and Inscriptions
Engraving is the oldest personalisation technique in memorial jewellery - from the Baroque memento mori ring to modern laser micro-engraving, which today inscribes initials, dates of death and even photographed handwriting into metal.
- 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 formsMourning Brooch
The mourning brooch is the central women's jewellery form of Victorian mourning wear - a brooch, often the size of a palm, pinned to dress, collar or veil, and today an almost exclusively historical field of collecting.
- Jewellery formsMourning Locket
The mourning locket is a pendant worn on a neck chain with an interior compartment - a concealed carrier of hair, photograph or inscription that keeps the memento close to the body and has been, from the eighteenth century to the present, the most important private form of mourning jewellery.
- Symbols & motifsUrn
The urn is the longest-lived mourning symbol of the European jewellery tradition - an antiquising vessel form that, since the late eighteenth century, has represented the ashes and thus, metonymically, the deceased person themselves.
- Symbols & motifsWeeping Willow
The weeping willow is the most formative botanical mourning symbol of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - born in the English landscape garden of the Enlightenment, adopted by sentimentalism as an image of silent sorrow, and become in Victorian mourning iconography the dominant mourning scene on pendants, miniatures and grave stelae.
- Symbols & motifsAnchor
In mourning and memorial jewellery the anchor is the classic symbol of *hope* - usually paired with the cross (faith) and the heart (love) as a threefold emblem of the virtues; a constant form in Victorian jewellery, and living on in modern memorial jewellery as a many-layered symbol of steadiness, anchorage and constancy.
- People & cultural historyWhitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast
Whitby is the small harbour town on the north-east English Yorkshire coast whose jet deposits and workshops supplied the Victorian mourning-jewellery system with its most important material foundation in the nineteenth century - at the peak around 1870, more than 1,500 cutters and carvers there worked for the global mourning market.
- People & cultural historyQueen Victoria (1819–1901)
Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901, became through her forty years of widow's mourning after the death of Prince Albert (1861) the central style-setting figure of the Victorian mourning-jewellery system - her personal practice of mourning shaped an entire age of European mourning culture.
- People & cultural historyPrince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–1861)
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, was in his lifetime a central cultural and political figure of the English court - his early death on 14 December 1861 set off his wife's forty years of widow's mourning and thereby shaped the whole Victorian mourning-jewellery system more lastingly than any other single death of the nineteenth century.