Vulcanite (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.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
In Victorian mourning jewellery, vulcanite was what French jet meant for continental mass production: an inexpensive and visually convincing alternative to costly Whitby jet. The decisive difference: French jet was glass, vulcanite an industrially manufactured first-generation plastic - and thus the technologically most interesting of the three great black mourning imitation materials.
Material and manufacture
Vulcanite is produced by the vulcanisation of natural rubber: the raw material is cross-linked with sulphur under heat (around 140 °C), yielding a hard, durable substance. Charles Goodyear patented the process in 1844; in the course of the patent disputes of the following years, several manufacturers established themselves in the United States and in England.
For mourning jewellery the rubber-and-sulphur mixture was dyed deeply with carbon black and iron oxides. The finished material could be cast, pressed, turned and polished like wood or horn - a sensationally versatile medium for jewellery making in the 1850s. Shaping was carried out chiefly by pressing: a heated blank was pressed into metal moulds and trimmed once cool.
Vulcanite in the Victorian mourning market
The peak period lies between about 1860 and 1895. Birmingham was the English centre of production; several manufactories - among them the Indo-Rubber, Gutta-Percha and Telegraph Works Company - supplied the whole of Europe. Typical pieces:
- Mourning brooches with relief motifs (anchor, weeping willow, forget-me-not)
- Pendant necklaces of articulated vulcanite beads
- Bangles cut from solid stock
- Drop earrings in drop- or cluster-shaped press moulds
In price vulcanite stood roughly at the level of French jet, that is three to five times cheaper than Whitby jet. This made the material affordable for the lower middle class - the stratum that only took up mourning jewellery at all through the Victorian bourgeois adoption of court mourning.
The American market
After the American Civil War (1861–1865) the US mourning-jewellery market rose sharply - hundreds of thousands of families had lost sons, fathers and brothers, and the American middle class reached eagerly for a mourning-jewellery tradition of its own. Connecticut became the centre of American vulcanite production; Goodyear's India Rubber Glove Company and the American Hard Rubber Company supplied jewellery, buttons, combs and hair slides in industrial quantities.
While Whitby jet remained expensive in the United States as an import, vulcanite was here often the only mourning material available. This American mass production explains why large holdings of Victorian mourning pieces of US provenance still appear regularly at auction today.
Ageing behaviour
Where conservation is concerned, vulcanite is the most problematic of the historical mourning materials. The material fades - UV light and oxygen oxidise the sulphur cross-links at the surface, so that the original deep black gives way to a brownish-green patina. On heavily aged pieces the surface may develop fine cracks; the material becomes brittle.
For these reasons Victorian vulcanite pieces are today often hard to place visually - a brooch that was once deep black now looks brown-olive. Anyone seeking to identify an inherited piece should look for:
- Discoloration along edges and on light-exposed sides
- Smell when rubbed (a faint rubbery odour)
- Weight - vulcanite is lighter than glass, somewhat heavier than jet
- Depth of detail - pressed reliefs are often crisper than carved jet
Decline
With the end of formal court mourning around 1900, vulcanite too disappeared from the jewellery market. Unlike onyx, which survived into Art Deco, the material found no second career - after the turn of the century rubber jewellery was regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned, and the emerging plastics (Bakelite, celluloid) were technically superior. The Birmingham manufactories switched to other rubber products, chiefly for the nascent automotive and electrical industries.
Vulcanite plays no part in modern memorial jewellery. Those who collect historical pieces treat them as delicate natural materials: store them in the dark, do not polish them, and use no alcohol-based cleaning agents.
Questions about this entry
- How can vulcanite be told apart from jet?
Vulcanite fades - well-preserved pieces today often show a brownish-green cast instead of the original deep black, especially along edges and on surfaces that were exposed to light. Genuine jet keeps its colour. Vulcanite also gives off a faint smell of rubber when rubbed; jet is odourless.
- Why does vulcanite age so visibly?
The material reacts with UV light and oxygen. The sulphur cross-links in the rubber oxidise at the surface, producing the characteristic brownish-green patina. Anyone who owns a Victorian vulcanite piece should keep it dark and dry - full restoration is not possible.
- Where was vulcanite mourning jewellery produced?
The main centre was Birmingham (England), with several large manufactories, alongside Connecticut (USA). English production supplied chiefly the domestic market and continental Europe; American production served the US mourning-jewellery market, which rose sharply after the Civil War of 1861–1865.
Further reading
- Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (2009)
- Rubber: An American Industrial History - Charles Slack (2002)
- Whitby Jet - Through the Eyes of a Miner - Helen Muller (2009)
Related entries
- Core conceptsWidow's Jewellery
Widow's jewellery is the graduated mourning jewellery worn by widows in the 19th century according to a strictly codified plan of court mourning - from deep matte black to half-mourning lilac, each phase with its own materials and its own formal language.
- 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.
- 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.
- MaterialsFrench Jet
French jet is a misnomer - not jet at all, but deep black pressed glass which, from the 1860s onwards, conquered the Victorian widow's-mourning-jewellery segment as inexpensive mass-produced ware.
- 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.
- 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.
- Jewellery formsMourning Brooch
The mourning brooch is the central women's jewellery form of Victorian mourning wear - a brooch, often the size of a palm, pinned to dress, collar or veil, and today an almost exclusively historical field of collecting.