Bog Oak

In the 19th century bog oak was the vernacular, patriotic Irish counterpart to English Whitby jet (see Whitby Jet). While Whitby jet was the high-priced standard material of the English Victorian mourning toilette, bog oak established itself from the 1840s onwards in Dublin and Galway as an inexpensive, easily obtainable material for mourning jewellery - and at the same time as a consciously Irish cultural symbol at the height of the Repeal and Home Rule movements. The peak period falls in the years between 1845 and 1900; thereafter the material largely disappears from the international jewellery market.

Material and formation

Bog oak forms over millennia. Oak trunks that fell into an Irish or Scottish raised bog in prehistoric times, or grew there, were protected from decay by the lack of oxygen typical of bogs. At the same time the humic acids dissolved in the bog water acted on the tannin of the wood and led to a permanent chemical blackening. The resulting material is:

• Deep black to dark brown - depending on age and tannin concentration; young pieces (2,000–3,000 years) are often brown-anthracite, very old pieces (5,000+ years) deep matt black
• Harder than fresh oak - the tannin has a consolidating effect, while the cell structure becomes more compact through slow mineralisation
• Recognisably wood - unlike jet, the wood grain is visible in carved pieces, which creates an aesthetic of its own
• Readily polishable - a matt lustrous surface is achievable, but not the high gloss of polished jet

Recovery traditionally takes place during peat cutting. Trunks are lifted out of the bog by horse power or (today) by machine and must then be dried slowly over months before they can be worked into pieces of jewellery.

History

Bog oak was known in prehistoric Ireland but was only systematically exploited as a jewellery material in the 19th century. The first documented workshops appear in the 1830s in Dublin (above all in Nassau Street and Grafton Street). The peak period begins with the Irish Famine (1845–1849), which paradoxically had two effects: massive emigration to the USA (with a large Irish-American diaspora as a future market) and an intensified formation of Irish patriotic identity.

Bog oak jewellery became a visible statement of Irish cultural self-assertion. Popular motifs:

• Celtic cross - a religious Irish symbol
• Harp - the national symbol of Ireland
• Shamrock - an Irish badge of recognition (see the later Irish coat of arms)
• Round towers (round towers) - early Christian Irish buildings as an architectural symbol
• Wolfhound - the Irish national animal
• Hibernia figure - the personification of Ireland

This iconographic charge made bog oak a sought-after gift and souvenir material in the Irish diaspora - above all in the USA and in Australia. In the 1860s and 1870s large quantities of exported bog oak jewellery were produced in Irish workshops, often combined with gold mounts and in some cases with small inset Whitby jet or onyx accents.

Working

Working followed a multi-step process:

1. Recovery of the trunk from the bog - manually with horse power, later with steam winches
2. Rough breaking down into manageable blocks (typically 30–80 cm in length)
3. Drying over several months to years, often with regular re-moistening to avoid drying cracks
4. Sawing up into thinner workpieces, suitable for pendants, brooches, bangles
5. Carving or turning with fine iron tools, often with templates for the typical Irish motifs
6. Polishing with waxes and oils, finally dry with felt
7. Setting in 9ct gold or silver, often with an inscription on the gold rim

Bog oak and Victorian mourning etiquette

Under the strict Victorian mourning dress code (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century) black jewellery was obligatory for the first months of a widow's mourning. Whitby jet was the official standard material - but its price lay at the upper end of the middle-class jewellery market. Bog oak was a markedly cheaper alternative: in the 1860s a bog oak brooch cost about a third to a half of a comparable Whitby jet piece.

For Irish families - above all in the American diaspora - an additional patriotic aspect came into play: bog oak jewellery signalled not only mourning but also Irish identity. In upper-class English households bog oak was correspondingly rarely worn - it was regarded as too "Irish" for strict English etiquette. In English-American middle-class families, by contrast, it was an established material for mourning jewellery.

Decline and status today

With the end of ritualised mourning fashion after the First World War (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) bog oak largely disappeared from the jewellery market. The Irish workshops in Dublin closed in the 1910s and 1920s; individual producers in Galway and in the Connemara region held on into the 1950s, often with a reduced range for the tourist market.

Today bog oak is a niche material. A handful of specialised craftspeople in Ireland continue to make jewellery and sculptures from bog oak; the raw material is obtained during regular peat cutting and dried by the traditional method. Collectors value historical Victorian bog oak pieces with clearly recognisable Celtic Irish iconography; auction prices range between €100 (simple brooches) and €2,000 (large, signed pieces with gold mounts).

In modern memorial jewellery contexts bog oak is occasionally used for historicising pieces - for instance for Irish-American families who wish for a conscious reference to their own origins in the memorial piece. Because of the scarcity of the material and the laborious working, however, modern bog oak pieces are rare and correspondingly high-priced.