Jet (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. Light, silent and shimmering with a matt lustre, it combined everything the strict mourning etiquette of the period demanded: no gleam, no sound, no weight to remind the widow of her loss - and yet enough presence to make her own standing visible.

History and distribution

The Romans already prized the stone. In the first century Pliny the Elder describes it as gagates, won at the river Gages in Lycia. In England jet has been found since the Bronze Age - the deposits on the North Sea coast of Yorkshire have been known for millennia. The true heyday, however, began on 14 December 1861, the day Prince Albert died: from then on, and for four decades, Queen Victoria wore nothing but black, lustreless jewellery.

Within a few years the small coastal town of Whitby in Yorkshire became the capital of an industry that had barely existed before. By around 1870 more than 1,500 people were working there in the jet trade - carvers, polishers, gold-mounters, dealers. The workshops supplied every European household that kept a mourning wardrobe; see also Widows Jewellery and The Victorian Era (1837–1901).

Material and manufacture

Jet forms from the wood of primeval conifers - mostly relatives of Araucaria - which some 180 million years ago, under pressure and in the absence of oxygen, was transformed into a coal-like substance. Unlike coal, however, it retains the fibrous structure of the wood, which is why it can be carved, turned and polished like a hardwood. Its specific gravity is about 1.3, only slightly above that of water - so even large brooches and multi-strand necklaces remain wearable.

Anyone wishing to test a piece for authenticity looks for three signs: warmth in the hand (the feel of wood rather than stone), electrostatic charging when rubbed, and a dark-brown streak left on an unglazed shard of pottery. The numerous imitations - French Jet of black pressed glass, Vulcanite (Ebonite) of hard rubber, later Bakelite - fail at least one of these tests.

Symbolism and meaning

The dull black was regarded as the only seemly lustre during the first, two-year phase of a widow's mourning. Where diamonds flashed with studied effect, jet was required to keep silent. It was precisely this restraint that made it a status symbol: to wear jet was to show that one had mastered the codes of mourning etiquette - and could afford pieces of Whitby Jet, whose prices by the end of the century were comparable to those of small gold work.

Within the jewellery itself a handful of motifs recurred with great discipline: clasped hands, forget-me-nots, plaited bands alluding to Hairwork, the anchor as a sign of hope, occasionally a tiny cross. Pampilles - drop-shaped pendants - were mounted in clusters and rattled softly as the wearer walked: an acoustic gesture of mourning that seems strange today.

Today

With the end of the Victorian era and the rise of cheap imitations, jet lost its standing; during the First World War it disappeared almost entirely. Collectors rediscovered it in the 1970s, and a small workshop scene in Whitby carries the tradition on to this day. Genuine jet rarely appears in contemporary memorial jewellery - it is too brittle for laser engraving and too valuable for mass production. Those who seek the deep black without buying a historical piece tend today to reach for black-enamelled gold. The personalised paths of the twenty-first century - fingerprint, engraving, hairwork, ashes, memorial diamond - take place in a dark setting rather than in the material itself.

See also: Whitby Jet, French Jet, Vulcanite (Ebonite), Widows Jewellery, The Victorian Era (1837–1901), Hairwork