Why does the urn suddenly appear in the eighteenth century?

With the rediscovery of Pompeii (excavations from 1748 onwards) and the neoclassical taste of the late Enlightenment, the imagery of antiquity returned. The burial urn was a standard motif on Roman gravestones; it fitted aesthetically into the new mourning iconography, which sought to distance itself from the drastic memento mori symbolism of the Baroque. By 1800 the urn is the most important mourning symbol of sentimental jewellery.

What distinguishes a mourning urn from a simple vase?

The iconographic urn follows a fixed canon of form: a raised foot, a bulging body, a stepped neck and a flat lid, usually crowned with a flame or a cloth. It frequently stands on a stele or a plinth, occasionally entwined with willow branches or ivy.

What inscription does the urn typically carry?

The initials of the deceased, sometimes the date of death, occasionally short mottoes such as Souvenir, À jamais or Im Gedenken. On English pieces also Sacred to the memory of …. The inscription is part of the picture, not of the mount - it is painted with the same brush as the rest of the scene.

Is the urn still alive in modern memorial jewellery?

Only sporadically - as a relief element on classically conceived mourning rings, for instance, or as a small gold symbol on pendants. As a principal motif it has become rare. What has stayed alive is the idea of the urn as a container for ashes: modern ash pendants and memorial diamonds continue the idea of wearing the material of the deceased person.

Urn

The urn is the longest-lived mourning symbol of the European jewellery tradition - an antiquising vessel form that, since the late eighteenth century, has represented the ashes and thus, metonymically, the deceased person themselves.

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