Why is the forget-me-not so closely bound to mourning?

The name itself is a plea - forget me not. In the Biedermeier the plant becomes the standard keepsake: friendship albums, correspondences, love letters and mourning jewellery all work with the motif. The little blue blossom becomes the iconographic condensation of the whole gesture - "remember me". Its transfer to mourning is only a small extension of that basic meaning.

In which jewellery forms does the motif appear?

Frequently as a painted element in sepia miniatures, as an engraved pictorial cipher on gold mounts, as a small enamel detail on mourning brooches, as part of the hand-with-bouquet motif (see Hand with Flower (Dexiosis and the Flower Gesture)), as a stone mosaic in Belle Époque micromosaic work, and as a pendant motif in Biedermeier lockets.

Does the forget-me-not have an international tradition?

Yes, with clear local emphases. In the German-speaking countries and in England (forget-me-not) the motif is central. In French sentimental jewellery it is less formative; there the hand with flowers or the fleur de pensée (pansy - a play on pensée, "thought") dominates. In the United States the tradition is taken over directly from Victorian England.

Is the motif still current today?

In folk art, souvenir jewellery and collectors' reproductions, yes. In modern memorial jewellery it no longer plays a part as a pictorial motif. The idea of pleading to be remembered is unbroken, however - today's fingerprint jewellery is structurally a modern forget-me-not.

Forget-me-not

The forget-me-not is the German-speaking world's symbol of mourning and remembrance par excellence - a small blue meadow flower whose very name becomes a plea to be remembered, and which has shaped bourgeois mourning jewellery since the Biedermeier.

Deutsch