Funerary Jewellery
Funerary jewellery is jewellery placed with a deceased person at burial or worn by the bereaved on the day of the funeral - an umbrella term covering very different forms with a tradition thousands of years old and a modern redefinition as a personalised keepsake.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
Funerary jewellery is the oldest term in the spectrum of mourning and remembrance jewellery forms. Whereas mourning jewellery denotes the pieces worn by grieving survivors (see Mourning Jewellery) and remembrance jewellery the personalised keepsake (see Memorial Jewellery), funerary jewellery designates everything that plays a part in the act of burial itself - from prehistoric grave goods, by way of the ritualised mourning toilette of the nineteenth century, to the modern ash pendant that issues directly from the cremation.
Currently available
Occasions
Funerary jewellery becomes relevant in several contexts:
- Preparing the burial - selecting personal pieces belonging to the deceased person that will go into the grave
- The day of the funeral - the grieving family chooses formal, discreet mourning jewellery (mourning ring, mourning necklace, mourning brooch; see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring), Mourning Necklace, Mourning Brooch)
- After the burial - personalised keepsakes are made from funerary substances (ashes, hair, fingerprint)
- Anniversaries and days of remembrance - the deliberate wearing of specific keepsakes tied to the burial
- A family set - identical or similar pieces for several family members as a shared ritual of remembrance
Personalisation
Three paths of personalisation are distinguished by occasion:
Substance-based personalisation (modern, post-mortem). The piece is made from a physical substance of the deceased person - ashes in a pendant, hair in a gold mount, a fingerprint as a relief plaque. This variant is systematically documented only from the eighteenth century onwards and, given the high cremation rate, has become the dominant form today.
Inscription-based personalisation (classic). The piece carries the name, date of death, biblical verse or motto of the deceased person - the engraved interior of a mourning ring (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)), the external engraving of a mourning brooch, the inscription band of a mourning necklace.
Symbol-based personalisation (ritual). The piece carries culturally and religiously charged symbols - cross, anchor, weeping willow, angel, hourglass (see Angels and Putti, Hourglass). This form dominates in formal, ritualised funerary contexts.
Material
Funerary jewellery encompasses practically all jewellery materials. Conventions of material vary by culture and period:
- Grave goods of antiquity: gold, silver, gemstones, bronze, amber
- Medieval religious funerary jewellery: reliquary pendants (see Reliquary Pendant), pilgrim badges, crosses
- The nineteenth century (ritualised mourning): jet (see Jet (Gagate)), vulcanite (see Vulcanite (Ebonite)), black enamel on gold, onyx
- The twentieth century (transition): discreet gold jewellery, sterling silver, stainless steel
- The twenty-first century (personalised form): all materials, often combined with ash capsules, acrylic casting, memorial diamonds (see Memorial Diamond)
History
Funerary jewellery is one of the oldest categories of jewellery form of any kind. Archaeological finds already document grave goods of an ornamental character in the late Stone Age - carved pendants of bone and shell, strings of beads, small bronze mirrors. In the great cultures of antiquity (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome) funerary jewellery becomes a craft discipline in its own right; Egyptian pharaonic tombs document the highest technical and material investment.
In the Christian Middle Ages funerary jewellery in the narrower sense recedes - the dead are interred without rich adornment, and personal pieces pass to the bereaved. The function of the burial ritual is increasingly taken over by jewellery worn by the grieving survivors - reliquary pendants, later Stuart crystal pendants and memento mori rings (see Tudor Mourning and Stuart Bequest Rings, Memento mori).
In the Georgian and Victorian periods (see The Georgian Era (1714–1837), The Victorian Era (1837–1901)) funerary jewellery becomes a highly ritualised social practice. The day of the funeral demands a specific jewellery toilette - black jewellery for the women, mourning rings for the men, inscription jewellery for family members.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries funerary jewellery shifts away from the ritual jewellery of the day and towards the personalised remembrance substance - ash pendants, memorial diamonds, fingerprint jewellery and hair pendants become the dominant modern form (see Ash Pendant, Memorial Diamond, Hair Pendant (Modern Memorial Jewellery)).
Funerary jewellery today
The modern market distinguishes three fields of application:
Classic ritual funerary jewellery. Discreet, formal jewellery for the day of the funeral. Black onyx, black freshwater pearls, matt gold, plain silver pieces. Market leaders: local goldsmiths, funeral homes, jewellery chains.
Personalised remembrance jewellery. Pieces made after the burial from substances of the deceased person. Ash pendants, memorial diamonds, hair pendants, fingerprint jewellery. Market leaders: specialised workshops and funerary partner networks.
Family-set solutions. One funerary substance (a larger lock of hair, say, or a divided quantity of ashes) is distributed across several pieces of jewellery destined for different family members. This form has been gaining considerable ground since the 2010s.
Care and storage
Care and storage depend on the individual piece - from the low-maintenance stainless-steel ash capsule to the historical silver reliquary pendant with its relic authentica.
As a general rule: pieces with an enclosed funerary substance (ashes, hair) are irreversible - accidental damage to the closure mechanism can result in the loss of the substance. For valuable heirlooms, regular inspection (every 10–15 years) by an experienced goldsmith is advisable. For modern pieces with a laser-sealed threaded closure the rule is: never open the closure yourself.
Questions about this entry
- What counts as funerary jewellery?
Three main categories. Grave goods - pieces of jewellery placed in the grave with the deceased person (commonplace in antiquity; today subject to restrictions, and severely limited above all in Orthodox Jewish and Islamic contexts). Ritual pieces of the day - jewellery worn by the bereaved on the day of the funeral (black mourning necklaces, mourning rings, black-enamel brooches). Keepsakes made from funerary substances - modern pendants containing the ashes, hair or fingerprint of the deceased person, which arise out of the burial (see Ash Pendant, Hair Pendant (Modern Memorial Jewellery)).
- What cultural differences are there?
Very substantial ones. Antiquity (Egypt, Greece, Rome): elaborate grave goods in gold, gemstones and personal jewellery. The Christian Middle Ages: simple grave goods, often pilgrim badges or reliquaries (see Reliquary Pendant). Jewish tradition: minimal grave goods, the body is interred in a plain linen shroud - jewellery is removed. Islamic tradition: no jewellery among the grave goods, the body is wrapped in five cloths. Modern secular burial: rings, necklaces and smaller personal pieces are often placed with the deceased or kept in the family as a memento.
- Is it permitted today to place jewellery in the grave?
In Germany and Austria: yes, with restrictions. In an earth burial, individual personal pieces belonging to the deceased person may accompany them (a wedding ring, a favourite necklace, a religious symbol). In the case of cremation, jewellery must be removed beforehand, since gold alloys partly vaporise at crematorium temperatures or fuse with the ashes (see Burial Laws and the Ashes of the Deceased (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)). For interment in an urn grove or a woodland burial, grave goods of jewellery are usually not provided for.
Further reading
- Material Culture of Death - Final Practices - Margaret Schwartz (2015)
- Tod und Trauer in Deutschland - eine soziologische Analyse - Norbert Fischer (2001)
- Grabbeigaben in vorgeschichtlicher Zeit - Hermann Müller-Karpe (1980)
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.
- Core conceptsSentimental Jewellery
Sentimental jewellery is the jewellery of the age of sensibility between 1760 and 1840 - pieces in which love, friendship and grief share the same imagery, and in which hair, miniature painting and personal inscriptions first become the load-bearing form.
- Core conceptsMemento mori
Memento mori is the Christian-Stoic exhortation to be mindful of one's own death - and at the same time the iconographic soil from which European mourning jewellery of the 17th century grew.
- 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 Necklace
The mourning necklace is a chain worn at the neck in black or muted material which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, became the standard daytime wear of the mourning period, and which lives on today as a reduced remembrance variant with a pendant.
- 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.
- 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.
- Jewellery formsFingerprint Pendant
A fingerprint pendant carries the line pattern of a fingerprint, milled or laser-engraved into gold, silver or platinum - today the defining form of modern remembrance jewellery and the technical successor format to the Victorian mourning locket.
- 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.
- 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.
- Practice & lawBurial Laws and the Ashes of the Deceased (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
In Germany, ashes are largely subject to mandatory cemetery burial (*Friedhofszwang*); in Austria practice is more liberal and varies by state; in Switzerland it is largely unrestricted. This has concrete consequences for ash jewellery and memorial diamonds; the legal position is country-specific and still changing.