Mourning Bracelet
The mourning bracelet is a remembrance piece worn at the wrist which became popular in the nineteenth century as plaited hairwork or as a jet link bracelet, and which lives on today as a leather bracelet with a relic setting or a fine gold bracelet with a remembrance element.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
Alongside the mourning ring (Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)) and the mourning locket (Mourning Locket), the mourning bracelet is one of the three most important remembrance jewellery forms of the nineteenth century. It unites two very different types of construction: the plaited hair bracelet (a bourgeois, sentimental tradition) and the jet link bracelet (a Victorian, formal jewellery form). Both live on today in reduced, modern variants - as a leather bracelet with a relic setting, a gold bracelet with a fingerprint element, or a bead bracelet with a remembrance bead.
Currently available
Occasions
Mourning and remembrance bracelets are chosen for a variety of occasions:
- Funeral and memorial service - as a discreet, formal piece in a dark material (onyx, black leather)
- First wearing after the loss - as a personal keepsake suited to everyday life
- The birthday and anniversary of the deceased person - as a deliberate act of wearing
- A family set - identical or similar bracelets for several family members, made from a shared remembrance substance (one plait of hair divided up, a small quantity of ashes distributed across several bracelets)
- Heirlooms - taking over historical hair bracelets or jet bracelets from family possession
Personalisation
Four paths of personalisation dominate in modern mourning bracelets:
Hairwork. The historically most significant form. A lock is worked into a plaited or knitted pattern and set into a gold mount. A few specialised workshops in England, France and Scandinavia still offer this technique today (see Hairwork).
An ash element. A trace of ashes is worked into a small gold or silver capsule, which in turn is fastened to the bracelet. The capsule is usually tightly sealed (a laser-sealed threaded closure) or cast beneath a cabochon.
A fingerprint element. The fingerprint of the deceased person is transferred to a small gold plaque - engraved, stamped or as a 3D relief. The plaque is attached to the bracelet like a charm (see Fingerprint Pendant).
An engraved inscription. The inner face of a gold plaque, or the inner face of a bangle, carries an inscription - a name, a date of death, a short motto or a biblical verse (see Engraving and Inscriptions).
Material
The choice of material mirrors the historical construction:
- Historical (19th c.): plaited hair with gold end caps, jet (see Jet (Gagate)) as a link bracelet, vulcanite (see Vulcanite (Ebonite)), bog oak (see Bog Oak), onyx, black enamel on gold
- Modern: sterling silver, gold 750/585, stainless steel, leather (black, brown, anthracite), freshwater pearl, onyx beads, plaited textile bands
- Fastening: lobster clasp, box clasp with safety catch, toggle bar, magnetic clasp (on leather bracelets)
History
The hair bracelet emerges in the late eighteenth century (see The Georgian Era (1714–1837)) as sentimental keepsake jewellery - at first as a gesture of friendship, later increasingly as a gesture of mourning. The technique of the cheveliers (French hair artists) reaches its technical peak in the 1830s and 1840s; between 1850 and 1880 the hair bracelet becomes the international standard form of bourgeois remembrance jewellery (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century).
In parallel, from the 1860s onwards, the jet bracelet emerges - driven by the peak of the Whitby jet industry (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast). This belongs to a different jewellery tradition: not a personal, sentimental piece but a socially prescribed formal mourning accessory.
With the First World War and the Edwardian period (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) both forms largely disappear from the public jewellery repertoire. Today they exist in reduced modern variants - and the hair bracelet is enjoying a quiet comeback in the context of the modern remembrance jewellery movement.
The mourning bracelet today
Three dominant variants shape the modern market:
The leather bracelet with a capsule. A black or brown leather band, discreet, with a small stainless-steel or silver capsule as its central element. The capsule holds a small quantity of ashes, hair or a fingerprint plate. Prices: €80–300.
The gold bracelet with a charm. A fine gold bracelet (anchor or belcher chain) with one or more charms - an ash capsule, a fingerprint pendant, an initial plaque, the birthstone of the deceased person. Prices: €400–2,500.
The hair bracelet on the historical model. A handful of workshops (above all in Sweden, England and France) continue to make plaited hair bracelets with gold mounts. Production takes several weeks and the price runs into four figures.
Care and wear
Care instructions by material:
- Leather bracelet: protect from water, do not bathe or shower wearing it, treat occasionally with leather care products
- Gold bracelet: occasional cleaning with a jewellery cloth, remove before sport
- Hair bracelet: store dry, keep out of water, protect from sunlight, have it checked by a goldsmith every 5–10 years
- Jet bracelet: keep dry only, no lotion, no perfume, no ultrasonic cleaning
How the piece is worn is entirely a matter of choice. Unlike in the nineteenth century, there is no social dress code (see Mourning Rituals in the German-Speaking World). Some wearers keep the bracelet on permanently - as a deliberate companion in everyday life - while others wear it only on occasions connected with the deceased person.
Questions about this entry
- What is a hair bracelet?
A hair bracelet is a band whose central section consists of the plaited or knitted hair of the deceased person. The hairwork is mounted with gold end caps, a central locket or a mourning clasp. The technique was perfected in the eighteenth century by French cheveliers and enjoyed its international heyday between 1840 and 1880 (see Hairwork). Today hair bracelets are still made by a handful of specialised workshops worldwide.
- What modern variants of the mourning bracelet are there?
Three principal variants dominate the modern market. The leather bracelet with a relic setting - a discreetly kept leather bracelet with a tiny gold or silver capsule holding ashes or a strand of hair (see Ash Pendant). The gold bracelet with a fingerprint element - a plaque or pendant bearing the fingerprint of the deceased person, worn on a fine chain (see Fingerprint Pendant). The bead bracelet with a remembrance bead - a single bead incorporating ash substance, combined with further beads of onyx, freshwater pearl or gemstone.
- What sizes are usual?
Usual wrist measurements lie between 16 and 21 cm. On rigid bangle bracelets the internal width must exceed the wrist measurement by about 1 cm so that the piece passes over the hand. Plaited hair bracelets and leather bracelets often have an adjustable fastening; link bracelets are fitted to the exact measurement.
Further reading
- The Power of Hair as Sentimental Jewelry - Helen Sheumaker (2007)
- Mourning Dress - A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (1983)
- Sentimental Jewellery - Shire Library - Ann Louise Luthi (2007)
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- PeriodsThe 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.
- 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.