Anchor
In mourning and memorial jewellery the anchor is the classic symbol of *hope* - usually paired with the cross (faith) and the heart (love) as a threefold emblem of the virtues; a constant form in Victorian jewellery, and living on in modern memorial jewellery as a many-layered symbol of steadiness, anchorage and constancy.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
In mourning and memorial jewellery of Christian character the anchor is one of the three central symbols of the virtues. Together with the cross (faith) and the heart (love) it forms the triad Fides, Spes, Caritas - an iconographic constant since early Christian antiquity, which reached its broadest peak in Victorian mourning jewellery (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)). In modern memorial jewellery the anchor is increasingly detached from its explicitly Christian charge and used as a general symbol of steadiness, anchorage and constancy - fitting for an attitude in bereavement in which a deceased person is remembered as the family's "anchor".
Symbolic meaning
The anchor symbol carries several overlapping meanings:
- Hope - its primary charge since the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament: "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Heb 6:19)
- Steadiness and constancy - the anchor holds the ship in the storm; in a mourning context a metaphor for the constancy of memory
- Anchorage in faith - within the triad of virtues, the support that holds the spirit steady in the storm of grief
- Maritime reference - in sailors' mourning jewellery, a concrete emblem of occupation
- Link between heaven and earth - in Near Eastern and Gnostic usage, a symbol of the connection between the invisible and the visible world
In Christian art the anchor is often read as a "disguised cross" - the shank as the vertical bar, the transverse stock as the crossbar. In the first three centuries, while the cross was still publicly taboo, the anchor served early Christians as a concealed symbol of confession.
History
Early Christian antiquity. Anchor symbols appear on Roman catacomb gravestones of the first and second centuries. As a hidden cross and as a reference to the Letter to the Hebrews, the anchor was one of the most important encoded Christian markers before the Constantinian turn.
Middle Ages. Anchor pendants are rarely documented; the form lives on in liturgical texts and in illumination, but remains subordinate as a jewellery form.
Renaissance and Baroque (see Baroque (c. 1600–1750)). The faith-hope-charity triad takes shape in jewellery. The first documented anchor jewels are made in the Dutch and South German workshops of the seventeenth century - often as combination pendants with cross and heart.
Georgian and sentimental (see The Georgian Era (1714–1837), Sentimental Jewellery). Sentimental anchor pendants become an independent jewellery form - small gold anchors as a gesture of hope in separation or bereavement, often with an engraved initial or a small lock of hair (see Hairwork).
Victorian (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)). The high point of the anchor symbol in mourning jewellery. Whitby jet anchors (see Whitby Jet), black enamel anchors on gold (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)) and bog oak anchors (see Bog Oak) belong to the standard mourning toilette. The virtue triad of cross, anchor and heart becomes a popular pendant form, above all in English and American pieces.
Edwardian (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)). The anchor symbol loses significance along with the whole mourning dress code. In naval contexts - above all during and after the First World War - the anchor becomes relevant again as an occupational and memorial symbol for fallen seamen.
Twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The anchor enjoyed a general comeback in the 2000s as a tattoo motif and as a jewellery symbol. In a mourning context the symbol is regaining importance - as a general emblem of hope for the bereaved, often combined with an ash capsule or a fingerprint element.
Formal variants
Several anchor forms are documented in a jewellery context:
Stock anchor (Admiralty anchor). The classic iconographic form: a vertical shank with a ring at the top (for suspension), a transverse stock in the upper third, curved arms with arrow-shaped flukes below. The most frequent form in mourning jewellery and folk art.
Anchor cross (crux ancorata). A hybrid form: the vertical bar of a cross terminates below in two curved anchor arms. A very old, early Christian form that became popular again in the nineteenth century.
Anchor with ship's hawser. The anchor is encircled by a coiled rope - typical of sailors' mourning jewellery and of memorial pieces for relatives who died at sea.
Anchor with heart. A second variant of the triad: the anchor pierces a heart - love anchored in hope.
Anchor in a laurel wreath. An anchor surrounded by a wreath of laurel or oak leaves - a military memorial symbol for naval sailors and officers.
Materials
Anchors were made in practically every jewellery material:
- Gold (see Gold in Mourning Jewellery) - the most frequent material, above all in the virtue triad pendants
- Silver (see Silver in Mourning Jewellery) - in vernacular work and in modern pieces
- Jet, vulcanite, bog oak - the specialist Victorian mourning materials
- Black enamel on gold (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)) - the classic Victorian anchor pendant
- Pinchbeck (the eighteenth-century gold imitation, a copper-zinc alloy) - inexpensive sentimental pieces
Modern pieces are often in sterling silver, stainless steel or titanium; ash anchor pendants and fingerprint anchor pendants form a memorial jewellery genre of their own.
How it was worn
Anchors are classically worn at the neck - as a pendant on a mourning chain (see Mourning Necklace) or as the central pendant of a mourning toilette. Specific conventions of wear:
- As a virtue triad pendant, together with cross and heart on the same chain
- As a widow's pendant - a widow mourning a husband who died at sea wears an anchor with a coiled hawser or in the anchor-cross hybrid form
- As a pendant of hope after a loss - the anchor marks, symbolically, the wearer's own finding of steadiness in grief
- As a tattoo variant - today often as a deliberately maritime tattoo commemorating a person whose occupation, pastime or life was bound up with the sea
The anchor in the modern memorial market
In today's market the anchor symbol serves several functions:
The classic memorial pendant. A discreet gold or silver anchor with an engraved inscription. Prices: 80–500 €. Popular in maritime families and in families that want a deliberate message of hope.
The virtue triad set. Three separate pendants - cross, anchor, heart - on a shared chain, or as three individual pieces for three family members. A modern revival of the Victorian triad.
Anchor with a relic setting. A larger anchor pendant with a built-in ash capsule or a fingerprint element. Prices: 300–1,500 €. The anchor form offers an aesthetically interesting way to integrate the relic setting into the shank or the stock.
The maritime memorial pendant. For families with a concrete history at sea - deceased seamen, fishermen, naval officers - as a deliberate symbol of identification. Often combined with a small ship motif or an inscription naming a home port.
The anchor is among the fastest-growing symbol options in the modern memorial market - driven both by religiously conservative families (as a symbol of hope) and by younger, secular mourners (as a symbol of steadiness, in a tattoo-minded generation).
Questions about this entry
- What does the combination of cross, anchor and heart mean?
It is the iconographic rendering of the three theological virtues from the First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:13): faith, hope, love. The cross stands for faith (see Cross), the anchor for hope, the heart for love (see Heart). The triad is documented from the Middle Ages onwards, but only became a popular jewellery form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - as the faith-hope-charity pendant in English pieces, as the Glaube-Hoffnung-Liebe-Anhänger in German-speaking countries.
- Does the anchor in mourning jewellery have a maritime reference?
Rarely as its primary meaning. In general mourning jewellery the anchor is an abstract symbol of hope; a concrete reference to the sea is usually not intended. Sailors' mourning jewellery is different: pieces made for the families of deceased seamen, fishermen or naval officers often carry the anchor as their primary symbol of identification. This sub-genre is documented above all in port cities such as Hamburg, Liverpool, Marseille and Bremerhaven. One distinctive variant is the mourning anchor with a coiled ship's hawser, worn in half-mourning for a relative who died at sea.
- In what forms does the anchor appear in Victorian jewellery?
Three principal forms dominate. The classic stock anchor (Admiralty anchor) - a vertical shank, a transverse stock at the top, curved arms with flukes below. This is the most frequent form, especially on mourning pendants and mourning brooches. The patent anchor (Hall's anchor) - more modern, with movable flukes; rather rare in Victorian pieces. The anchor-and-cross combination - the vertical bar of the cross terminates below in an anchor, symbolising faith founded upon hope. A distinctive mourning jewellery form.
Further reading
- Lexikon christlicher Symbole - Jutta Seibert (2002)
- Sentimental Jewellery - Shire Library - Ann Louise Luthi (2007)
- Mourning Dress - A Costume and Social History - Lou Taylor (1983)
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.
- Core conceptsSentimental Jewellery
Sentimental jewellery is the jewellery of the age of sensibility between 1760 and 1840 - pieces in which love, friendship and grief share the same imagery, and in which hair, miniature painting and personal inscriptions first become the load-bearing form.
- Symbols & motifsCross
The cross is the most formative Christian symbol of mourning and remembrance - from the medieval reliquary cross via the Victorian jet cross to the modern memorial pendant; in all its formal variety (Latin cross, Celtic cross, patriarchal cross, cross patté) it always points to death, redemption and resurrection.
- Symbols & motifsHeart
The heart is the third element of the Christian triad of virtues (faith - hope - love) and at the same time the strongest secular symbol of love and affection in mourning and memorial jewellery - from the medieval Sacred Heart via the Georgian heart locket to the modern ash pendant in the shape of a heart.
- Symbols & motifsWeeping Willow
The weeping willow is the most formative botanical mourning symbol of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - born in the English landscape garden of the Enlightenment, adopted by sentimentalism as an image of silent sorrow, and become in Victorian mourning iconography the dominant mourning scene on pendants, miniatures and grave stelae.
- Jewellery formsMourning 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.
- 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 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.
- MaterialsGold in Mourning Jewellery
Gold is historically the most dominant carrier material of mourning and memorial jewellery - usually in muted alloys, often contrasted with black enamel or as a restrained gold setting around a dark principal material such as jet, onyx or a plait of hair.
- 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.
- PeriodsThe Georgian Era (1714–1837)
The Georgian era spans the reigns of the four kings George I to George IV and of William IV in Britain. In mourning jewellery it is the epoch in which sentimental jewellery was invented - sepia hair painting, the lover's eye, the miniature portrait on ivory, and the posy ring in transition to the memento mori ring.