Heart
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.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
Alongside the cross, the heart is the most important symbol of mourning and memorial jewellery. Where the cross carries the religious charge (death, redemption, resurrection), the heart stands for love and affection beyond death - a message equally legible in secular and in religious terms. In the Christian triad of virtues faith, hope, love (1 Cor 13:13) the heart represents caritas, Christian love and mercy. In Victorian mourning jewellery (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)) it becomes the dominant pendant form; in the modern memorial jewellery market the heart is by a wide margin the most frequent pendant silhouette for personalised pieces (ashes, hair, fingerprint).
Symbolic meaning
In a mourning context the heart carries several overlapping meanings:
- Love and affection - its primary charge; the love of the bereaved for the deceased, outlasting death
- Caritas - the Christian virtue of merciful love, the third member of the faith-hope-love triad (see Cross, Anchor)
- Seat of the soul - in pre-Christian and medieval thought the heart was held to be the seat of the soul and of character; remembering the deceased means holding fast to their "heart" in memory
- Pain - above all in the Sacred Heart tradition (the pierced heart), as a deliberate pointer to the pain of grief
- Fidelity and bond - in double or interlaced hearts, as a symbol of a bond that continues
History
Antiquity. The heart as the seat of love is already present in Greek and Roman lyric poetry (Sappho, Catullus, Propertius). Depictions in jewellery are rare - the stylised heart form does not yet exist.
High Middle Ages (twelfth to fourteenth centuries). Sacré-Cœur mysticism arises in the women's convents of the Rhineland and in the Beguine movements of southern France. The heart of Christ becomes an object of mystical veneration. The first depictions of the heart in illumination are documented.
Late Middle Ages (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries). The stylised heart form - two-lobed, tapering to a point below - is documented for the first time (in a manuscript of 1344). It spreads rapidly through the love and court literature of the late Middle Ages.
Renaissance and Baroque (see Baroque (c. 1600–1750)). Memento mori jewellery (see Memento mori) incorporates the heart as a token of love for the deceased. The first documented heart pendants with a hollow setting for locks of hair or miniatures date from this epoch.
Georgian and sentimental (see The Georgian Era (1714–1837), Sentimental Jewellery). The high point of the heart pendant. The heart locket - a gold heart with a hinged closure and a lock of hair or a miniature portrait inside - becomes the standard form of sentimental jewellery. The witch's heart (a slightly skewed heart curving downwards, with a crown) is a Scottish speciality, originally a good-luck charm, later a pendant of love and remembrance.
Victorian (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)). The heart dominates the mourning and memorial pendants of the epoch. Whitby jet hearts (see Whitby Jet), black enamel hearts on gold (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)), bog oak hearts (see Bog Oak). It is in this period that the virtue triad of cross, anchor and heart (see Cross, Anchor) becomes iconographically standardised.
Edwardian (see The Edwardian Era (1901–1910/1914)) and the twentieth century. With the decline of ritualised mourning fashion the heart loses importance in a mourning context, but remains present as a general symbol of love. Mourning heart pendants become a niche.
Today. In the modern memorial jewellery market the heart is enjoying a massive renaissance - driven by the suitability of the form for hollow ash settings and fingerprint plaques (see Ash Pendant, Fingerprint Pendant). The heart is today by a wide margin the most frequent pendant silhouette for personalised memorial jewellery.
Formal variants
Plain heart. A symmetrical, stylised heart. Frequently with an engraved inscription, initials or date of death. The standard form.
Witch's heart. The Scottish variant: a slightly skewed heart curving downwards, often with a crown above. Originally a good-luck charm (against witches), reinterpreted in the eighteenth century as a pendant of love and remembrance. Frequent in Scottish and northern English collections.
Claddagh heart. The Irish variant: a heart held by two hands and topped by a crown. It signifies "love (heart), friendship (hands), loyalty (crown)". When used in mourning, a widow's symbol (worn with the heart turned inwards).
Sacred Heart. The heart of Christ, pierced or encircled by a crown of thorns. A Catholic tradition; used in a mourning context as a symbol of pain.
Winged heart. A heart with angel's wings or with wings rising - symbolising the soul freeing itself from the body. Documented above all in English Victorian pieces.
Double heart. Two interlaced hearts - for spouses, siblings or other close bonds. Especially usual in mourning for a spouse.
Flaming heart. A heart with flames rising above its point. Mystical and passionate in charge; used in memento mori pieces (see Memento mori) as a symbol of the soul's love.
Transfixed heart. Pierced by an arrow, sword or lance - the pain of love, the pain of separation. In mourning contexts, a pointer to the pain of loss.
Materials
Hearts were made in practically every jewellery material:
- Gold (see Gold in Mourning Jewellery) - by a wide margin the most frequent material, above all for high-quality pieces
- Silver (see Silver in Mourning Jewellery) - in vernacular work and dominant in modern memorial pendants
- Jet, vulcanite, bog oak - the Victorian mourning materials (see Whitby Jet, Vulcanite (Ebonite), Bog Oak)
- Black enamel on gold (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)) - classically Victorian
- Pearl (see The Pearl in Mourning Jewellery) - small half-pearls pavé-set in a heart shape
- Garnet (see Garnet (Mourning Garnet)) - above all in Bohemian half-mourning pieces
- Stainless steel, titanium, acrylic - modern materials for ash and fingerprint jewellery
The heart shape as a relic setting
One important technical property makes the heart dominant in modern memorial jewellery: the silhouette is ideal for integrating a hollow setting. The swelling at the centre of the heart offers natural space for:
- an ash capsule with a laser-cut threaded closure (see Ash Pendant)
- a fingerprint plaque as a micro-relief (see Fingerprint Pendant)
- a hollow setting for hair with a rock crystal window (see Hairwork)
- a glass casting with ashes embedded in it
- a memorial diamond as the central stone (see Memorial Diamond)
This suitability of the form explains why more than half of all modern ash and memorial pendants are made in some variant of the heart - the other silhouettes (teardrop, round, tube) are technically just as suitable, but emotionally less charged.
The heart in the modern memorial market
In today's market the heart serves several functions:
The classic memorial pendant. A discreet gold or silver heart with an engraved inscription. Prices: 80–600 €.
The heart as relic setting. A hollow heart setting holding ashes, hair or a fingerprint element. Prices: 200–1,500 €. The most frequent form of modern ash pendant.
The family set. Several identical or similar heart pendants - for three siblings, for a mother and daughter, or for a whole family. A shared gesture of remembrance.
The virtue triad pendant. Heart, cross and anchor on one chain or as three separate pieces. A modern revival of the Victorian triad.
Heart-shaped memorial diamond. Synthetic diamonds made from ashes (see Memorial Diamond) are grown or cut in a heart shape - an expensive modern variant.
The heart is by a wide margin the fastest-growing symbol in the modern memorial jewellery market. Unlike the cross (clearly marked as religious) and the anchor (rather more of a niche), the heart is universally understood, equally usable in secular and religious settings, and instantly legible as a symbol of love and remembrance.
Questions about this entry
- Why is the stylised heart shape not anatomical?
The two-lobed shape tapering to a point below does not correspond to the anatomical heart - which is a single-lobed organ the size of a fist, asymmetrical to the left. The symbolic form probably arose in the late fourteenth century from the stylisation of plant motifs (ivy, water-lily leaf, lotus blossom) associated with love in medieval iconography. Only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did the stylised form become the standard symbol of love; today it is recognisable worldwide and no longer legible as anatomy.
- Which variants of the heart occur in mourning jewellery?
Several are documented. The plain heart - the most frequent form, often with an inscription or initials. The pierced heart (the Sacred Heart of the Catholic tradition) - a heart transfixed by a sword or encircled by thorns, symbolising the pain of love or the suffering of Christ. The winged heart - a heart with angel's wings, symbolising the ascent of the deceased person's soul. The double heart - two joined hearts, for spouses or close bonds. The crowned heart - a symbol of the widowed queen, or the Irish Claddagh heart of fidelity. The flaming heart - a heart with rising flames, mystical and passionate in charge.
- Are heart-shaped ash pendants a modern invention?
A modern invention in the ash variant: yes, since ash pendants have existed as a jewellery form only since the 1980s (see Ash Pendant). The heart-shaped hollow setting, however, has older precedents: from the seventeenth century onwards there were heart-shaped mourning pendants with a hollow at the core in which a lock of hair (see Hairwork), a miniature portrait or an inscription was sealed. The modern ash heart pendant is the direct successor of that tradition - the substance changes (from hair to ashes), the form remains.
Further reading
- The Heart in Western Iconography - Eric Jager (2000)
- Sentimental Jewellery - Shire Library - Ann Louise Luthi (2007)
- Love and the Heart - A Cultural History - Marilyn Yalom (2018)
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 & motifsAnchor
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.
- Symbols & motifsTear
The tear - as a shaped teardrop pendant, as a drop-shaped pearl or as a painted tear on a miniature portrait - is one of the most direct mourning symbols of all; it joins bodily reality (the drop actually wept) to symbolic condensation, and appears in jewellery from the Baroque memento mori to the modern teardrop ash 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 Ring (Memorial Ring)
A mourning ring - also called a memorial ring - is a finger ring that carries the memory of a deceased person, usually in the form of an inscription, an image, a lock of hair or a fingerprint.
- Jewellery formsAsh Pendant
The ash pendant is a modern remembrance pendant with a tightly sealed hollow setting that holds a small quantity of a deceased person's ashes - today the fastest-growing jewellery form in the modern mourning and remembrance market.
- 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 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.
- 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.