Mourning Locket

Occasions

Mourning lockets are commissioned across a broad range of occasions:

• After a death - the most frequent occasion. The piece is furnished with an inscription, photograph or hair of the deceased person and worn beneath the dress
• As provision during life - parents preparing a locket for a child with their own lock of hair or photograph, sometimes decades in advance
• Family pieces - lockets with several compartments holding locks or photographs of different family members, often built up across three generations
• Remembrance of a sibling - in the case of a stillborn child or a sibling who died young, as a keepsake kept for many years
• The modern keepsake - with a fingerprint on the front and hair or ashes within

The mourning locket is one of the few jewellery forms to have existed in a virtually unchanged function across the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Personalisation

Personalisation runs along two axes: the outer surface (visible) and the interior compartment (concealed).

The outer surface

Inscription. Initials, date of death, a motto - usually on the front of the locket. In the nineteenth century as gold engraving or as an applied black-enamel element (see Engraving and Inscriptions).

Pictorial symbolism. A weeping willow over an urn, a posy of forget-me-nots, an anchor - as an enamel relief or an engraved pictorial cipher. In Georgian sentimental jewellery often as the central motif of the front (see Urn, Weeping Willow).

Material. A matt black material on the front (jet, onyx, black enamel) as a phase-specific indication of mourning. In half-mourning also a moonstone or amethyst cabochon.

Modern laser engraving. A fingerprint line or a photographed sample of handwriting on the front - the contemporary variant (see Fingerprint Jewellery).

The interior compartment

A hollow setting for hair. The most classic form of interior personalisation. A lock of the person remembered lies beneath a disc of rock crystal or glass. On more elaborate pieces the hair is worked into a fine mosaic or weaving (see Hairwork).

Sepia hairwork painting. A sub-genre of hairwork - minute painting in wash with chopped hair as the pigment, often in a weeping-willow-and-urn composition (see Sepia Hair Painting).

A portrait miniature. A portrait painted on ivory; on pre-photographic pieces the most frequent form of interior personalisation (see Miniature Painting on Ivory).

A photograph. From the middle of the nineteenth century the standard variant - daguerreotype, later albumen print, then silver bromide photograph. Most surviving Victorian lockets contain photographs.

An inscription tablet. A small gold plate with engraved initials and a date of death, either as the sole personalisation or as an accompaniment to hair or a photograph.

A hollow setting for ashes. The modern variant - a capsule with a trace of ashes, frequently in combination with a fingerprint on the exterior (see Ash Jewellery).

Material

Mourning lockets are made across a broad range of materials:

High-quality pieces:

• Gold 750 with a black-enamel front and a rock-crystal interior compartment
• Gold 585 with an onyx or jet cabochon and a glass interior compartment
• Platinum in modern premium pieces

Mid segment:

• Sterling silver with an enamelled or engraved front
• Gilded silver (vermeil) as a less expensive alternative to gold

Vernacular pieces:

• Silver-plated metals with pressed sheet ornament
• Rolled gold (a mechanically applied gold layer on a base metal) - the Victorian mass-produced ware

The choice followed the wearer's social class strictly - the aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie wore gold, the middle bourgeoisie silver, the working class rolled gold.

Closure mechanism

The central question of construction in a locket is the closure. Three principal types:

The hinged closure. The locket consists of two or three hinged shells that snap together with a small catch at the edge. The standard closure since the eighteenth century. Advantage: easy to open; disadvantage: difficult to repair if damaged.

The screw closure. A rarer variant - the lid is screwed onto a thread. Used above all on pieces containing ashes, since it seals better than a hinged closure.

The multiple hinged closure. On larger lockets with three or more compartments - a series of small hinged flaps giving access to individual image carriers or inscription tablets. The standard format on family lockets.

Modern lockets are constructed similarly; high-quality pieces work with soldered or screwed cavities where ashes or hair are to be enclosed permanently.

Final formats and design variants

The typical formal variants:

• The oval locket - the most classic format, roughly 2 to 4 cm high, with a central image on the front and one interior compartment
• The round locket - the second most frequent form, often with symmetrical iconography
• The heart-shaped locket - above all in sentimental and love jewellery; mourning variants exist but are rarer
• The book-format locket - small, book-like lockets with a hinged cover and several interior leaves, often with worked-in lettering or small locks of hair
• The cross-shaped locket - a combination of crucifix and locket, above all in Catholic mourning jewellery
• The modern pendant locket - minimalist, often with a fingerprint on the exterior and a hollow setting for ashes or hair within

On modern pieces the exterior is often more restrained than on Victorian originals - today's mourning lockets are frequently designed as unobtrusive everyday pendants whose reference to mourning outsiders do not recognise.

History

The mourning locket is one of the oldest surviving forms of mourning jewellery. Its predecessors reach back into the Middle Ages - Christian reliquary pendants with hinged interior compartments holding the relics of saints. With the sensibility of the eighteenth century the form becomes secular and refers to one individually remembered person.

Its heyday lies in the nineteenth century. Three phases can be distinguished:

1. Late 18th / early 19th c. - sentimental lockets with sepia hairwork painting or a portrait miniature, often with a forget-me-not border
2. High Victorian (1840–1880) - mourning lockets in matt black materials with locks of hair or a photographic interior compartment, codified according to the phase of court mourning
3. Late Victorian and Belle Époque (1880–1910) - lighter pieces, frequently more decorative in design, with a photograph and enamel accents, ordered less strictly by court mourning

With the First World War and the end of formal mourning dress the mourning locket loses its normative framework - but unlike the mourning brooch it survives as a private jewellery form: the photograph locket with a family portrait is alive throughout the twentieth century and still an everyday item in the grandmother generation of the 2020s.

The mourning locket today

In the current market the locket is one of the most firmly established forms of remembrance jewellery. The most important forms of personalisation:

• The photograph locket with a laser-engraved photograph on a small interior face - modern and unobtrusive
• The ash locket with a tightly sealed hollow setting - a principal field of application for Ash Jewellery
• The hair locket as a historicising variant, often combined with modern engraving on the exterior
• The fingerprint locket with a fingerprint exterior and a hollow setting for ashes or hair within - the iconic contemporary variant
• The family locket with several small photographs or locks - as a deliberate piece across generations

For modern pieces most workshops combine classic hollow-setting technique with modern laser engraving. The locket is thus one of the few jewellery forms in which historical tradition and contemporary technique overlie one another seamlessly.