Weeping Willow

The weeping willow is the most important botanical mourning iconography of the Western jewellery tradition. While other mourning plants (ivy, oak, laurel) appear as secondary motifs, the weeping willow is the mourning plant par excellence - above all at the height of sentimentalism between 1780 and 1880. Its form (long hanging branches that fall to the ground like tears) supplies a visual metaphor legible immediately as an image of grief; its anchorage in Psalm 137, "By the waters of Babylon...", lends it in addition a biblical charge of exile. In the modern memorial jewellery market the weeping willow has a reduced, stylised presence - visible above all in antique pieces, occasional engravings and the deliberate choice of tattoo.

Symbolic meaning

The weeping willow carries several overlapping meanings:

• Silent sorrow - the hanging branches as a gesture of being sunk within oneself
• Grief as tears - the branches fall to the ground like tears; the English term weeping willow makes this explicit
• Exile and loss - linked through Psalm 137 to the experience of being forsaken
• Transience - the willow breaks easily, its branches are pliant and snap; a metaphor for life
• Resurrection - paradoxically: willows shoot again readily from cut branches, which in the eighteenth century was also read as a symbol of resurrection

In the Christian pictorial tradition the weeping willow is not a liturgically central symbol - it stands at the margin of Christian iconography. Its charge comes from the sentimentalism of the late Enlightenment and from the landscape garden movement of the eighteenth century.

History

Before 1750. The weeping willow scarcely exists in jewellery iconography. Psalm 137 is well known, but the willow of the psalm text is not identified in medieval art as a specific mourning plant.

1760s to 1780s. The rise of the English landscape garden (William Kent, Lancelot "Capability" Brown). In the great English grounds - Stowe, Stourhead, Castle Howard - weeping willows are planted deliberately, often along watercourses and beside symbolic burial monuments for deceased family members or for memorial stagings (the famous Rousseau island in the park of Ermenonville near Paris, laid out in 1778 after Rousseau's death, is one example). From this garden staging emerges the iconographic tradition of the "melancholy landscape with weeping willow".

1780–1810: sentimentalism. The weeping willow becomes the dominant motif of sentimental jewellery (see Sentimental Jewellery). Small miniature paintings on ivory plaques or on vellum show the classic mourning scene: weeping willow, mourning figure, urn, dog, temple in the background. These miniatures are set into hollow gold mounts under rock crystal and worn as a mourning pendant or mourning brooch.

In the United States an American tradition of willow-scene jewellery emerges in the 1780s and 1790s - prompted by the death of George Washington (1799). Thousands of small mourning pendants with a painted weeping willow scene were made in the United States; today they form a collecting field of their own.

Victorian (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)). With the rise of ritualised mourning fashion the weeping willow becomes a fixed element of mourning iconography. It appears on Whitby jet brooches (see Whitby Jet), on black enamel pendants (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail)), in bog oak carvings (see Bog Oak) and as an engraving on mourning rings.

In the late nineteenth century the visual language changes: instead of the detailed sentimental scene, the weeping willow is increasingly stylised - as a floral border, as a small iconographic marker, as an engraved outline.

Twentieth century. With the decline of ritualised mourning fashion after the First World War the weeping willow scene largely disappears from the jewellery market. It survives in gravestone iconography - many cemeteries in Britain, France and the United States carry weeping willow reliefs on their stelae.

Today. A reduced presence in the modern memorial jewellery market. Occasional engravings on pendants, isolated stylised designs in modern jewellery lines, antique pieces as collectors' items. In tattooing the weeping willow is enjoying a second career as a melancholy memorial motif.

Pictorial context and standard composition

The classic weeping willow scene on a mourning pendant of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries follows a firmly established composition:

Middle ground. A large weeping willow with long hanging branches, often on the bank of a small stream or pond.

Foreground. A female mourning figure in a long white or pale robe, classicising in the antique manner (in the style of contemporary neoclassical fashion). She leans against the willow or against a grave stele.

Mourning objects. An urn on a column, a gravestone with an inscription (often initials and a date of death), bunches of flowers on the ground - usually forget-me-nots or violets.

Symbol of fidelity. A dog at the mourning figure's feet - symbolising fidelity beyond death.

Background. A neoclassical temple, a ruin or a park. The composition places the mourning within an idealised, antiquising landscape.

Inscription. On the grave stele, often initials, a date of death or a short Latin or English motto ("Sacred to the Memory", "Not Lost But Gone Before").

This composition was painted in hundreds of small variations by miniature painters (in England, for instance, William Hamilton; in the United States John Ramage and Edward Greene Malbone). The miniatures are typically 4–6 cm across and executed on ivory plaques or thin vellum.

Materials and workmanship

The weeping willow appears in jewellery in several forms:

Painted miniature. On ivory (see Ivory), vellum or card; the miniature is set into a hollow gold mount with a rock crystal window. Frequently on the reverse of a mourning pendant with a lock of hair (see Hairwork) on the front.

Engraved line drawing. On mourning rings, mourning brooches and mourning lockets; often as a reduced, stylised willow without further scenery.

Carved in jet, vulcanite or bog oak. As a relief on the front of a mourning pendant or brooch; in especially elaborate pieces in high relief with a recognisable mourning figure.

Black enamel inlay. A black weeping willow scene on a gold ground - a late Victorian variant.

Micromosaic. Very small mosaics of tiny glass tesserae reproduce the weeping willow scene - a speciality of the Italian workshops in Rome and Venice (see Micromosaic (Micromosaico)).

The weeping willow in the modern memorial market

In today's market the weeping willow plays three roles:

Antique collectors' items. Sentimental miniatures with a weeping willow scene from the years 1780–1840 form an auction category of their own. Prices: 200–5,000 € depending on painter, quality and condition.

Stylised modern pendants. A few workshops make modern pendants with an engraved, stylised weeping willow - usually as an engraving on the reverse of a memorial pendant or as the outline of a pendant design.

Tattoo motif. In memorial tattooing the weeping willow is a growing motif, often combined with initials, a date of death or a portrait of a deceased person. This use outside jewellery extends the iconographic tradition.

The weeping willow belongs among those mourning symbols whose historical heyday is unambiguously over, but whose symbolic charge is so strong that they live on in a reduced, deliberately chosen form. Unlike more modern symbols (butterfly, fingerprint) the weeping willow is not an "emerging" symbol - it is a deliberate historical quotation, chosen by mourners who seek a connection to the sentimental mourning tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.