Mourning 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.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
The mourning necklace is among the most widespread jewellery forms of Victorian mourning culture. With the death of Prince Albert in 1861 (see Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–1861)) and Queen Victoria's subsequent lifelong mourning (see Queen Victoria (1819–1901)), a social dress code of mourning became established in Britain and across the Western European bourgeoisie (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century), within which the mourning necklace became the standard wear of the educated woman. What remains of this highly ritualised form today is a reduced, discreet remembrance necklace - usually with a personalised pendant.
Currently available
Occasions
Mourning necklaces - historically as today - are chosen for a variety of occasions:
- The acute period of mourning - as a visible sign of grief in the first weeks and months after a loss
- The anniversary and birthday of the deceased person - a remembrance necklace deliberately worn
- A family heirloom - taking over a historical mourning necklace from an earlier generation
- A carrier for a remembrance pendant - as a plain chain for a locket, a fingerprint pendant or an ash pendant (see Fingerprint Pendant, Ash Pendant)
- Half-mourning in the historical sense - rare today, but still practised in particular cultural contexts (Orthodox Judaism, traditional Catholic families, southern European widows' dress)
Personalisation
Four paths of personalisation dominate today:
The choice of pendant. The most important lever of personalisation. The chain serves as the carrier of an individualised pendant - a locket with a photograph, a fingerprint pendant, an ash capsule, a memorial diamond, a pendant holding a lock of hair.
Material and colour. Black, anthracite, matt gold, freshwater-pearl grey, onyx black, discreetly combined with small accents in diamond white or pearl cream.
The form of the links. Plain (anchor, belcher, Singapore, curb) or with mourning symbolism (carved ivy, weeping willow or oak links on historicising pieces).
An inscription in the clasp. Initials, a date of death or a short motto on the inner face of the clasp - a modern, discreet form of personalisation.
Material
Historical and modern materials differ markedly:
- Historical (19th c.): jet (see Jet (Gagate)), vulcanite (see Vulcanite (Ebonite)), bog oak (see Bog Oak), onyx, black enamel on gold, black glass (Parisian jais français), horsehair in a gold mount (see Hairwork)
- Modern: sterling silver, gold 750/585, matt gold, stainless steel, freshwater pearls, onyx, black spinel, black diamond
- Carrier material for pendants: a fine anchor or belcher chain, 0.8–1.5 mm in gauge - an unobtrusive carrier for the dominant pendant element
History
The mourning necklace in its modern form emerges in the first half of the nineteenth century. Earlier mourning necklaces existed - as religious keepsake chains with a reliquary pendant, for instance (see Reliquary Pendant), or as Baroque memento mori chains (see Baroque (c. 1600–1750)) - but the socially standardised mourning necklace is a Victorian phenomenon.
The form reaches its peak in the 1860s and 1870s. Whitby on the north-east English coast (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast) becomes the principal production centre for jet necklaces; the Berlin iron manufactories (see The Berlin Iron Manufactories) supply iron mourning necklaces for the German market; Paris relies on jais français and black enamel on gold.
With the Edwardian period (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) and the First World War the form changes: mourning necklaces become lighter, less black, more discreet - until, after 1918, they largely disappear from the public jewellery market. In the current market the form is enjoying a reduced comeback - as a discreet carrier chain for individualised remembrance pendants.
The mourning necklace today
Today's mourning necklace differs fundamentally from its Victorian predecessor. Where the Victorian mourning necklace was a public statement - visible, prescribed, with clear codes - today's is a private keepsake. It is no longer worn to signal mourning but to remember one particular person.
Three trends shape the modern market:
Reduced and elegant. A plain gold chain with a tiny pendant (a fingerprint, initials, an ash element). The piece looks like ordinary everyday jewellery but carries a specific meaning of remembrance for the wearer.
Historicising. A necklace deliberately Victorian in effect, in onyx, jet or bog oak - often for collectors or as a deliberate statement.
Multifunctional. A chain that serves as the carrier for several interchangeable pendants - a locket for the funeral, a fingerprint pendant for everyday wear, a memorial diamond on anniversaries.
Care and wear
Mourning necklaces are as uncomplicated in their care as their choice of material suggests. Gold chain: occasional cleaning with a jewellery cloth. Jet and bog oak necklaces: store dry, keep out of water, no lotion. Stainless steel: practically maintenance-free.
How the piece is worn is entirely open today: the necklace may be worn daily, only on anniversaries, or only on particular occasions. Unlike in the nineteenth century, there is no social dress code - the necklace is the wearer's private decision about remembrance.
Questions about this entry
- What distinguishes a mourning necklace from an ordinary one?
The mourning necklace is matt black or muted in tone. It dispenses with lustre, pale gemstones and any conspicuous gleam of gold. Historical pieces are made of jet, vulcanite, bog oak, onyx or black-enamelled gold. The links are often carved as oak, weeping willow or ivy motifs and thus carry the mourning connotation symbolically. An ordinary necklace of gleaming gold or silver would not have been socially acceptable in the half-mourning and full mourning of the nineteenth century.
- What lengths are usual?
Three lengths are historically documented. Short (40–45 cm) as a close-fitting necklace, often with a small pendant. Medium (60–80 cm) as a sautoir with a large locket, looped once around the neck. Long (120–180 cm) as a long guard chain, wound several times around the neck with a watch or locket at the end. Modern pieces generally follow the short or medium variant.
- What can I wear as a mourning necklace today?
Today the mourning necklace has turned into a discreet remembrance necklace. Usual variants: a plain gold chain with a small pendant (a locket, a fingerprint pendant, an ash pendant), an onyx or freshwater-pearl necklace, a leather or textile cord with a remembrance element. The strict black variant of the nineteenth century is now only rarely worn - the social dress code of mourning no longer exists (see Mourning Rituals in the German-Speaking World).
Further reading
- Mourning Dress - A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (1983)
- Whitby Jet through the Years - Helen Muller (1985)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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 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.
- 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.
- People & cultural historyThe Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century
The rising middle classes of the nineteenth century were the principal bearers and principal consumers of the era's mourning and memorial jewellery - a social stratum that took over the aristocratic model of court mourning, gave it symbols and materials of its own, and in the course of industrialisation turned it into a mass market.