Hand with Flower (*Dexiosis* and the Flower Gesture)

The hand with flower is one of the characteristic sentimental ciphers of Georgian and Biedermeier jewellery. It joins two iconographic strands - the ancient dexiosis gesture (the joining of hands as a gesture of farewell on ancient grave stelae) and modern flower symbolism (flowers as bearers of meaning in the culture of sensibility of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). The combination produces an ambiguous image, at once sentimental and memorial, widely used in jewellery of the period 1780–1840.

Ancient roots: the dexiosis gesture

The deeper iconographic layer of the hand-with-flower gesture lies in the ancient dexiosis. On Hellenistic and Roman grave stelae the deceased is often shown taking leave of family members or companions - the right hands are clasped in a gesture of farewell. This joining of hands is a central image of ancient sepulchral iconography and stands for the last touch between the living and the dead.

In modern jewellery the gesture is modified in several ways:

• A single hand (instead of two hands touching) is shown - either emerging from a sleeve (the gesture of a living person) or issuing from a cloud (the gesture of one deceased or heavenly)
• An object (usually a flower) is held in the hand or held out
• A second hand may be added - either as a mirrored joining of hands (the classical dexiosis) or as the delicate hand of the living wearer

The gesture thus becomes allegorical and intimate at once: a farewell, a greeting of love, a greeting of remembrance - the precise meaning must be read from the iconographic context.

Layers of meaning

Three principal readings of the hand with flower:

A greeting of love among the living. The hand offers a bouquet to the beloved. The piece is sentimental jewellery - a love pendant, a betrothal ring, a token of friendship. The meaning is primarily positive and affirmative: the tender gesture of devotion, of giving, of enduring affection. Frequent flowers: rose (love), violet (constancy), forget-me-not (a promise of remembrance).

A greeting in mourning, from the grave. The hand emerges from a cloud, from the ground or from an urn and offers a bouquet to the living wearer. The image shows the deceased sending, from beyond, a last greeting or a gesture of remembrance. The meaning is primarily bound to mourning: the hand of the dead reaching once more - across death - to establish a connection. Frequent flowers: forget-me-not, lily, a willow branch.

A memento greeting as allegorical image. The hand is anonymous - it stands not for a particular person but allegorically for the memento gesture itself. It offers the wearer a symbolic flower (often a forget-me-not) as an admonition to remember. This variant is not mourning or love jewellery in the strict sense but a general sentimental gesture.

The iconographic ambiguity is constitutive. Depending on the wearer's circumstances, a piece with the hand-and-flower motif can carry all three meanings - as a love pendant in summer, as a mourning pendant after a loss, as a memorial keepsake in later life.

Frequent flowers and their meanings

The particular choice of flower in the hand-with-flower gesture follows the broader flower symbolism of sentimental jewellery:

Forget-me-not (Myosotis) - the most important accompanying flower. Meaning: remembrance, constancy, do not forget (see Forget-me-not). With the hand gesture, a clear pointer to the memorial character of the piece.

Rose - love in all its variants. Red rose: passionate love. White rose: pure love, or mourning for a deceased beloved. Pink rose: tender, young love. Broken rose: a life or a relationship cut short.

Lily - purity and death. Associated with the Virgin in the Catholic Marian tradition; used in mourning for young women, girls and maidens.

Violet - modesty and constancy. A frequent choice in Biedermeier sentimental jewellery, emphasising the bourgeois virtue of the person remembered.

Pansy - thoughts, pensée (French for "thought"). A pansy in the hand means that the deceased thinks of the wearer, or that thoughts of remembrance for the deceased are being kept alive.

Lavender - care and devotion. Widespread in English sentimental jewellery.

Lily of the valley - life newly begun, or hope broken. Used in mourning for young parents or infants.

Mixed bouquets of three or more flowers are frequent and carry combined meanings - forget-me-not plus rose plus pansy, for instance, as the combined message remembrance + love + thoughts.

Jewellery forms with the hand-with-flower motif

The hand-with-flower gesture appears in several jewellery forms:

Mourning and sentimental rings. A painted or enamelled hand-with-flower composition on the bezel, often combined with an inscription on the inner face (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)). Especially widespread in the Regency style (c. 1810–1830).

Sentimental and mourning lockets. A larger hand-with-flower composition on the front of the locket (painted on ivory, enamelled on gold or engraved as a line drawing); inside, a lock of hair or a miniature portrait of the person remembered (see Mourning Locket).

Sepia hair painting pieces. A specifically Georgian variant. The hand-with-flower composition is executed with chopped hair as pigment in the sepia hair painting technique (see Sepia Hair Painting). Often together with other sentimental symbols (weeping willow, urn, a forget-me-not border).

Accompanying element in lovers' eyes. In some lovers'-eye pieces (see Lovers' Eye) the hand with flower is integrated as a border or as a small accompanying element beside the eye.

Brooches and neck pendants. Larger pieces with a central hand-with-flower composition, often as family memorial pieces.

Material and technique

The hand-with-flower composition is executed in several techniques:

• Watercolour or gouache on ivory - the finest variant, above all in miniature portrait workshops
• Sepia hair painting - with chopped hair as pigment on ivory, a specifically Georgian sentimental jewellery technique
• Black or white enamel relief on gold - the most frequent industrial variant; the image is executed as an enamelled relief
• Engraved line drawing - a plainer variant, often on the inner faces of rings or the outer faces of lockets
• Embroidered or woven hairwork - in mixed technique with hair bouquets and small gold elements

The choice of technique follows the hierarchy of the piece. Aristocratic and upper-middle-class pieces are usually executed in watercolour on ivory or in fine enamel; middle-class pieces in engraved line drawing or simple enamel; vernacular pieces in stamped sheet-metal relief.

Decline in Victorian mourning jewellery

In Victorian mourning jewellery the hand-with-flower gesture loses importance. Three reasons:

A shift in material. Victorian mourning jewellery aesthetics tend towards the pure matt-black material surface (jet, vulcanite). Fine iconographic elements such as a hand with flower are difficult to render on such materials.

A stylistic break with sentimental jewellery. Victorian mourning jewellery deliberately sets itself apart from the pre-Victorian sentimental tradition. The hand with flower is regarded as too sentimental, too old-fashioned, too little in keeping with court mourning.

Competition from photography. The spread of the daguerreotype and later of albumen photography displaces the painted miniature as the preferred pictorial medium in mourning jewellery. The hand with flower - being a painted image - is pushed aside by the realism of the photograph.

In Victorian mourning pieces the hand with flower appears only very sporadically - usually as a deliberately historicising gesture in especially elaborate family memorial pieces.

The hand with flower in modern memorial jewellery

In contemporary jewellery practice the motif is virtually absent. Three exceptions:

Historicising workshops. A few specialist workshops - above all in England and the Netherlands - make historicising sentimental pieces in the Georgian style. Hand-with-flower pendants are a niche line here, often commissioned for particular occasions (wedding anniversaries, family memorial pieces).

Conceptual jewellery. Individual contemporary jewellery artists take up the hand-with-flower gesture as a quotation from cultural history - usually in deliberately abstracted or estranged variants.

Tattoo culture. The hand with flower appears in modern tattoo culture - above all in the neo-traditional style - as a memorial motif. Here the gesture is often combined with a date or a name; it follows the historical sentimental jewellery tradition directly, but as an image on skin rather than a piece of jewellery.

The hand with flower as a deeper layer

The hand-with-flower gesture is a striking example of how a particular iconographic tradition reaches its peak in the sentimental jewellery phase and is then marginalised by a change of style. Three observations from cultural history:

A combination of ancient and modern elements. The gesture joins ancient sepulchral iconography (dexiosis) with modern flower symbolism. This mixture is characteristic of the educated bourgeois-aristocratic understanding of jewellery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Ambiguity as an advantage. The gesture can carry meanings of love, mourning and memento simultaneously. That ambiguity made such pieces usable for different occasions - a woman might receive a hand-with-flower pendant as a wedding gift, wear it as a mourning piece after her husband's death, and keep it in later years as a general keepsake.

Sentimental sensibility as cultural background. The gesture only makes sense in a culture that recognises feeling as meaning - the Empfindsamkeit of the late eighteenth century (see The Georgian Era (1714–1837)). With the Victorian shift towards the formal order of court mourning, the gesture loses its cultural resonance. It becomes historical iconography, surviving in the collectors' market but no longer active as living jewellery practice.