Kazimiera
10-08-2013, 09:41 PM
Today the word “Victorian” refers to a certain highly ornate style of architecture, furnishings, and fashion. It is a style that most people of the Gothic persuasion look at with romantic longing. The 19th century cemeteries that cover most of America today are the most visible and recognizable symbol of this bygone era. But the one element of Victorian style that continues to fascinate us is the mourning fashions of the day.
The Victorian age was named for England’s Queen Victoria. She took the throne in 1837 and died on January 22, 1901. Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died of typhoid in 1861. During this period of forty years, the Queen was in mourning. She remained in full mourning for three years and dressed the entire court that way. The Victorian era reflected the Queen’s prudish ethics as well as, most visibly, her personal taste in mourning.
Victorian mourning fashion was aimed mainly at women, widows in particular. The fashion had a way of isolating a widow in her time of need just as the Queen had done. For the first year, a woman who was in mourning was not allowed to exit her home with out full black attire and a weeping veil. Her activities were initially restricted to church services. But mourning attire was the perfect way to show the wealth and respectability of a woman. Some went so far as to dress their servants for mourning when the head of the household passed away. Middle and lower class women would go to great lengths to appear fashionable in times of mourning. Dying clothing black and then bleaching them out again was quite common. The industry of mourning became so vital to tailors that rumors were spread concerning the bad luck of recycling funeral attire. Hair art also developed in the Victorian era to allow family members to keep mementos of their departed loved ones.
Mourning clothing was an unmistakable and intricate part of life in the 19th century. The act of proper Victorian mourning seems an art today. Certain lengths and stages of mourning as well as colors and fabrics all contributed to this language.
Stages
In nineteenth century England, a widow was expected to remain in mourning for over two years. The rules were slightly less rigid for American women.
Three stages of mourning were observed by women.
Full mourning, a period of a year and one day, was represented with dull black clothing without ornament. The most recognizable portion of this stage was the weeping veil of black crepe. If a women had no means of income and small children to support, marriage was allowed after this period. There are cases of women returning to black clothing on the day after marrying again.
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Second mourning, a period of nine months, allowed for minor ornamentation by implementing fabric trim and mourning jewelry. The main dress was still made from a lusterless cloth. The veil was lifted and worn back over the head. Elderly widows frequently remained in mourning for the rest of their lives.
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Half mourning lasted from three to six months and was represented by more elaborate fabrics used as trim. Gradually easing back into color was expected coming out of half mourning. All manor of jewelry could be worn.
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The standard mourning time for a widower was two years but it was up to his discretion when to end his single stage. Men could go about their daily lives and continue to work. Typically young unmarried men stayed in mourning for as long as the women in the household did.
Men often wore a black armband.
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Mourning for parents ranked next to that of widows; children mourning for their parents or parents for children being identical. One year was the standard length: six months in crepe, three in second, and three in half mourning. Second mourning, without full mourning, is suitable for parents-in-law. After one month in black, lilac should follow.
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Young children were never kept more than one year in mourning. No female under the age of 17 was to wear creped full mourning.
Fabrics
Most of the fabrics associated with Victorian life are no longer in use today, partially due to the invention of modern synthetic fabrics, but also because many Victorian fabrics are too expensive to manufacture today.
A full widow’s weeds (archaic word for garment) in the mid 19th century required a crepe dress with a plain collar and broad weepers cuffs made of white muslin, a bombazine mantle (cloak), and a crepe bonnet with veil for outdoors. A widow’s cap was for indoor use.
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Crape bonnet
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Widow's caps for indoor use
Crepe, used for the veil and trim, is the fabric most associated with mourning. The fabric is made from silk and similar to crepe de chine; in this instance “crepe” refers to the crinkled surface of the lightweight fabric. Mourning crepe was made from gummed tightly twisted silk threads. It was a volatile and hazardous fabric. In the rain, it would shrivel and practically disintegrate. Rainproof crepe was introduced at the turn of the 20th century, but it didn’t change things much. Constant breathing through the fabric caused many respiratory health problems.
Dresses were made from henrietta and melrose trimmed with crepe. Henrietta cloth was a twilled fabric with a silk warp and worsted weft that has the appearance of a twilled front and smooth back, and the feel of cashmere. Melrose was a linen named for the town in Scotland it came from. Bombazine was used by the less affluent in the beginning of the Victorian era. It was a fabric that mixed silk and wool.
As the crepe wore out it was removed and replaced with fresh material. An economical woman could use an old dress in full mourning; some women dyed a dress black for this purpose.
Caps, cuffs, and collars could all be made from lawn. The name comes from the town Laon in the north of France. The fabric is a linen that was used mainly for garments worn by the clergy. A fine, sheer, plain-weave cotton, made from high quality yarns. For the less affluent, collars and cuffs were also made from muslin, a variety of cotton weaves originally made in the Middle East. (Today’s muslin is incredibly coarse by comparison.)
Cuffs of lawn were 9" long, according to the size of the wrist. The fabric was not intended to overlap, but to meet; they were fastened with two buttons and loops placed at the upper and lower edges. These large cuffs were referred to as weepers because one could use them to wipe the nose during crying fits.
Mourning handkerchiefs were made from cambric. It is a plain, soft linen fabric, sometimes also woven in cotton, with a slight lustrous finish on the face of the cloth. Cambric is woven in the north of France in many grades from fine to coarse.
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Mourning handkerchiefts, edged in black
Petticoats were made from silk and stuft. Stockings were of cashmere, silk, or balbriggan. Balbriggan eventually came to refer to the underwear made from the cloth. It was a lightweight, single weft knitted cotton fabric often lightly napped on one side. The fabric is inherently elastic, hence the undergarments, but it ran easily.
Gloves were constructed from kid, leather made from a young goat, also known as kidskin. It is incredibly soft and supple. Towards the later half of the 19th century, wearing fur became fashionable in America. Mourning women were only allowed the blackest animal pelts. This included black sealskin, the darkest sheared beaver, and astrakhan, which was the curly pelt of a newborn Persian lamb.
Colors
The color black best represented the Victorian act of mourning because it symbolizes the absence of light and in turn, life. It was an instantly recognizable sign that a loved one had departed this life. It is also said that wearing black for mourning comes from a Roman idea; the mourners could prevent being haunted from the ghost of the deceased by cloaking themselves in black.
Black was not the only color that signaled mourning. In full mourning, white was used for cuffs and collars. By half mourning a woman had a bevy of colors to choose from, by comparison. Grey, mauve, purple, lavender, lilac, and white could all be implemented. Deep reds such as burgundy were also fashionable in the late Victorian era. Subtle prints using any combination of these colors were also allowed. This trend was more popular in the south because of the weather. Dressing in full white, including the weeping veil, was a sign of mourning in the tropics.
Children’s garments were white with black trim in the summer and gray with black trim in the winter. This was mostly for infants and girl’s between the ages of 15 and 17. Children under the age of 15 were thought not to be able to handle the grief brought on by assuming mourning. A girl was considered a woman at 17 and could be in full mourning if a loved one was to die.
Source: http://www.morbidoutlook.com/fashion/historical/2001_03_victorianmourn.html
Kazimiera
11-07-2013, 12:59 PM
One Hundred Years of Mourning fashion show at Costume College 2013
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I have to admit, having a fashion show at a costume convention with 12 people is a bit of a stretch, especially when those people are also attending the convention and some of them are teaching classes. So I was extremely gratified when all but two were very happy to repeat our successful show from the Riverside Dickens Faire, and I was able to find two models who could wear the two gowns that those missing models who were unable to attend so graciously offered. A couple of them even drove up for the day just to be in the show. And this time I invited Nancy and Russell S. from Riverside Dickens to be our narrator and Undertaker/doorman.
I made up and printed programs for Russell to hand out to the students that had each model listed with the era of their gown so our audience could follow along better. The whole idea is to see a living timeline of the changes in dress silhouette. I printed them on white paper with this gravestone on half of one side then on the opposite side of the paper printed the information so it could be folded in half. I thought it would be a nice touch to the program.
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I also found some background music to play as people entered the room to sit down to create an atmosphere. It was Beethoven’s Symphony #7 and I found it on itunes for 99 cents. I only wanted the first couple minutes allegretto from the symphony to play because the second half was a little more upbeat, and not quite the mood I wanted. Fortunately I found it was the same music that was used in the movie, “The King’s Speech” with Colin Firth. They did exactly what I wanted in his “Speaking Unto Nations” radio talk. If you want to hear it to get into the mood while you read this, its here on youtube. Speaking Unto Nations-Beethoven's symphony #7 Even though the subject matter of our presentation isn’t the happiest, we had bits of joking and light comedy to lighten the mood so it wasn’t gruesome. My intention was for it to be educational and the dramatic black silhouettes showed the different decades off very clearly.
I can tell you we got a lot of attention when we were walking around and assembling for this. A lot of photos are showing up, and I’ve been waiting for more before I finished this entry.
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With the set-up at Costume College (CoCo), we would be doing this in a classroom setting, not a stage this time. That caused me some worry as to how we would be able to line up along a wall for people to see us. We were assigned a room on a corner that had an entrance at the back and on the side. The room was long and slightly narrow so I requested the hotel turn all the chairs sideways to face the long wall. I had the students enter at the back door and we lined up outside the front side door so we could walk in after the music stopped. Have I mentioned herding cats before? Trying to figure out who walked in first for the timeline to end up correct along the wall seemed to be mindboggling to us all.
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Nancy began reading the introduction to the program and introduced One Hundred Years of Mourning Fashion, and we walked in. For a nice touch, Nancy and Russell had made a black wreath and hung it on the front of the podium. I thought this was a very thoughtful addition, and someone later sent me a pic of mourning drapery. Hmmmm…this could turn into a big production someday.
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We had a total of 12 people included in this presentation, when I invited Kristine S. as Queen Victoria (1860), and Nancy as our narrator (who also dressed in black) and Russell as an Undertaker. I think we were very impressive. The audience was able to see us quite close, the first row being about 5 feet away. At the end of the presentation, Nancy surprised me by adding, “As the author Charles Dickens would say, I give you the Founder of the Feast, Valarie LaBore”.
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I went up to the podium to thank all my models, and to tell the story behind how this all came about. After being inspired by a smaller version of a timeline silhouette of underpinnings, I talked to Shelley P. about us both doing a few more years of mourning dress at the Riverside Dickens Festival fashion show. I contacted Nancy S., the director & producer of the show and asked if we could include it. With her approval, I began contacting costume friends of mine and over the year each of them researched the year they wanted to make. We all tried for as historically correct as possible.
Then I opened it up to questions from the audience and of course the first question everyone always asks, and it still confuses us, what are the stages of mourning in the dress colors? We found out it isn’t cut and dry because it seemed to vary. First year full mourning was unrelieved dull black. No arguments there. Afterwards, additions of color to collars and cuffs were accepted using white, grey, lavender, & mauve. Third year sometimes included the entire dress being grey, lavender or mauve. But again, that varied according to who you read. And to confuse matters further, some of the earlier time period gowns in full first year would have white. White was also used when mourning a child, as my 1830s model Gina wore.
Our dresses were variously made from cotton, dotted swiss, a modern crape, brocades, embroidered cottons, silk taffeta, and broadcloth. Some dresses contained lots of detail, others not. Each model wore some jewelry accessory that fit her time period. Finding history on the jewelry was probably the hardest because we just couldn’t find it. Our best research was of photos and catalog photos of the mourning dress of the time periods. I found we could also just use a dress of the period and make it black. I don’t think anyone followed the custom of throwing it into a vat of black dye instead of making one. But it was done in the poorer classes. I own two mourning petticoats that when washed, the dye comes out. I can’t positively ID them as mourning but it would be unusual to have them be black since the Victorians liked to be able to have clean white underpinnings.
As we ended the show, our audience gave us a very appreciative round of applause and commented on how impressed they were with the workmanship of our gowns, and the details they put into them. I was so proud of each of them because they were all very nicely done, and weren’t just plain old black dresses. My final admonition in the presentation was “back then wearing black was also considered fashionable as it is today, so buyers of antique fashions beware: the black gown you are looking at may not be mourning but may in fact be a fashionable little black dress.”
These are photos collected from all my friends who took them of us in the class and afterwards in the hallway. I know there are many many more but I wanted to get this blog entry done now. I’m collecting them all to share in my online photo album too.
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Source: http://timetravelingincostume.blogspot.com/2013/08/one-hundred-years-of-mourning-fashion.html
Kazimiera
04-21-2015, 10:13 PM
Hayden Peters Talks About Skulls, Hairwork, and the Fashion of Mourning
Source: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/an-interview-with-antique-mourning-jewelry-collector-hayden-peters/
To view the website of Lord Hayden Peters: Art of Mourning http://artofmourning.com/
In this interview, historian and art director Hayden Peters charts the evolution of mourning jewelry from the 16th century through its most prolific period during the reign of Queen Victoria. Along the way, he discusses how mourning jewelry differs from sentimental jewelry, and highlights such genres as hairwork, miniature portraiture, and symbolism. Based in Australia, Peters can be contacted via his website, www.artofmourning.com, which is a member of our Hall of Fame.
Growing up with antiques collectors and costume designers, I developed a passion for the Victorian age and the 19th century. I collected Victorian silver—bracelets, watches, and other things. I worked very hard to pay as much as I could for the best pieces I could find. My interest in jewelry, especially memorial and sentimental jewelry, began when I saw a ring with “in memory of” engraved on the top. I thought it was a wonderful symbol of affection to wear for a loved one. This ring was from 1852 and belonged to a woman named Mary Ann Lewis. I traced her genealogy and tried to learn as much as I could about the time period of the ring.
Soon I was collecting necklaces, rings, and bracelets, and that led to the world of sentimental and cultural history. I kept going further back and ended up specializing in the period from about 1500 to 1920. I’ve now been collecting for about 18 years.
My collection is very cross-cultural. Especially with memorial pieces, the history of one piece really reflects culturally upon another. In colonial times, the Americans were quite good at appropriating or bringing over the motifs and symbols of the English pieces. Protestants, obviously, held true to a lot of the tenets in England. Then they started to adapt it and work in their own motifs. Obviously the French have a different take on it, the Germans as well.
As you go south through the European Continent toward Catholic-based regions, the symbols on mourning jewelry included more religious, cross-like imagery. The southern European way of coping with grief was different from the northern countries.
There were also commonalities, especially where hairwork was concerned. For example, it can be difficult to tell whether a piece was made in either New York or London. But table-worked hair, mourning samplers, and other pieces could also be regional, offering unique perspectives on their culture. Thus, a Swiss piece from the mid-19th century can easily be identified by its hairwork—the way it used thick braids and things. These pieces were all made at home.
Collectors Weekly: What are the differences between mourning, memorial, and sentimental jewelry?
Peters: Memorial pieces were made for public events related to a death. Mourning jewelry was usually a little more personal. While several pieces might be made for someone’s death, it was still for the family or people close to the deceased.
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This gold ring from 1787 features an enameled band and a dedication to two people.
The early precursors to mourning jewelry displayed the skull and crossbones and all those memento mori, remember-you-will-die motifs. Shakespeare commissioned mourning rings. But the mourning rings from the 1500s and 1600s the skull and crossbones and those motifs as a statement of living. It meant ‘yes, you would be judged at the end, so live your life correctly’. A skull and crossbones was not always about death.
I think that’s one reason why sentimental jewelry is the most misunderstood of all jewelry, especially when mourning comes into it. A lot of people think it’s morbid and maybe grisly, but it’s not. Honoring someone’s life with a piece of mourning jewelry is one of the most beautiful things you can do for somebody. I can’t stand the negative connotations. And sometimes it’s hard to differentiate whether a piece is for mourning the death of a loved one or just a token of affection.
A typical sentimental piece is a locket with hair in it. You might see a neoclassical portrait or symbol from the late 18th century. In the 19th century mourning and memorial pieces were fashionable. Wearing someone else’s hair was pretty typical. It had been going on since the 14th century, and even back to ancient Rome.
Often the sentimental stuff is really unusual. Like the “regard” rings, with rubies, emeralds, amethysts, garnets, and diamonds, or “dearest” rings, with diamonds, emeralds, amethysts, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and topaz—the first letter of each stone spells out the word “regard” or the “dearest.” Those pieces, obviously, were not for mourning. They were sentimental pieces.
Collectors Weekly: Did sentimental and mourning jewelry happen at the same time?
Peters: Yes. The practice kicked in after the death of Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649. That’s when symbols of mourning, the culture of mourning, and the industry to produce the objects really hit their stride. A lot of royalists wore his portraits. The pieces that showed him looking upward symbolized his death.
But there were also pieces made when he was alive in which he was looking ahead and laughing. This sort of sentimental jewelry was worn around the same time, so you can’t really say one predates the other. And they were certainly simultaneous as far as it being an industry.
Collectors Weekly: How were cultural influences reflected in mourning and sentimental jewelry?
Peters: Jewelry as an art form, a wearable piece of art, and an expression of a person evolved with the culture. Usually fashion dictated the artistic paradigm shifts in a country, and that often flowed through to other countries. What people wore reflected the art and the mass entertainment and media of the time.
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Seed pearls were commonly used in mourning jewelry. This locket from the late 1700s was probably in remembrance of a child.
The Baroque period extended from the 16th to the 18th centuries, so the jewelry from that time took on all the elements of the period. The Baroque aesthetic was promoted as a way of subjugating people and getting them to see the grandeur of God. The jewelry simply appropriated all these wonderful flourishes. There were lots of organic imagery and nature motifs, floral patterns, and detailed gold work.
By about the 18th century, jewelry started to embrace Rococo, as seen in all those little scrollwork shanks. Ring bands that once would have been plain and circular started to take on more fluid lines. The biggest shift came in the neoclassical period, which changed everything and is probably the most radical shift.
On my website you can see the evolution. For example, rings at one stage were just bands with a memento around the side, frequently the name of someone who died. Then, all of a sudden, all these wonderful cameo rings appear. They featured an oval ring mounted on the band with a piece of ivory inside and a miniature portrait, or some sort of neoclassical depiction, painted on top.
Just like that, the religious symbols were all but gone. There might be a miniature on a ring in the form of a cypress tree pointing towards the heavens. Or the piece might have a weeping willow, or perhaps broken and unbroken columns.
The pieces kept getting bigger. Large pendants, for example, began to be worn on the exterior of the person. The neoclassical costumes started to reflect this—the earrings, bracelets, and other things. This trend was also a reflection of personal wealth and the growth of the middle classes, who had started to make money. Jewelry wasn’t just for the aristocracy anymore. There was more wealth, so more people wanted to show it off.
In the early 19th century, the neoclassical style went even more high-end. George IV was very decadent. Before he became George IV, he fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert. They were married in 1785, but it was annulled under the Royal Marriages Act because Maria was a Catholic and a widow. But George loved her, so he had a portrait made by the court miniaturist of her eye and part of her nose. He wore it in a locket underneath his lapel to hide his passion. And he didn’t show Maria’s full face in order to keep her anonymous.
That’s how eye portraiture became so popular between about 1790 and 1830, especially among young people. A lot of what happened in royalty became fashion. So if a king or queen took on a certain art or lifestyle or some sort of social tweak or change, people would start doing it, too.
Eye portraiture transcended sentimental and mourning jewelry. A lot of people think it was just a type of mourning jewelry, but it wasn’t. It’s only mourning if it’s set in a teardrop-shaped brooch or pendant, or if the eye is pointed up. Such pieces are very rare and hard to find.
The mourning industry received its biggest boost after Prince Albert died in 1861. When he passed on, Queen Victoria only allowed mourning wear and jewelry in court, and that influenced the fashion. The middle classes were now wealthier, and the mortality rates were high. Mourning was still a dreary, dull thing—people wearing black, crepe, and who knows what else—but it started to become more fashionable than it ever had been before.
This began to change in the 1880s when women started to shift away from being the center of the household and thus the center of mourning. That led to the feminist movement and the suffragettes about 20 years later. By the end of the 19th century, attention had shifted away from the mourning industry. People were tired of the same old thing. Even Victoria broke with convention and started to change later in her life.
The Victorians were very good at appropriating previous styles of art. There was neo-Gothic, neo-Rococo, even neo-Baroque. That’s why this jewelry has always represented the social mainstream version of art. As the periods changed, it took on the contemporary flourishes of the day. Hair mementos were hidden away underneath rings or held in glass compartments. The opulence of the neoclassical periods was out, while symbols such as tear-shaped pearls were used to represent the idea of mourning.
Collectors Weekly: How did the jewelry change at the beginning of the 1900s?
Peters: Mourning jewelry made of gold or pinchbeck—a brass gold-like alloy—with lots of black enamel was seen as unfashionable and dreary. The Nouveau period opened up a more freewheeling lifestyle and a different perspective on living. There was a total shift in communications and the global movement of people. There were changes in how cities developed, and the mobile social structure was much different than anything that had gone before. The folk-art aspect of this stuff, such as your mourning samplers, started to fade.
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The woman in this brooch with paste edging is holding a lantern, as if to light the way for one’s encounter with one’s maker.
Then with the insanely high mortality rate of World War I, people began to reconsider whether they really wanted to spend so much of their lives so absorbed by death. Just before the war, the jewelry’s popularity was waning. After the war, the upswing you might expect in the mourning industry simply didn’t happen.
Aesthetically, though, it was really a good period. You begin to see pieces with just onyx and a diamond, or onyx and a pearl placed within a man’s ring.
Lockets from 1860 to 1880 are probably the most common examples of mourning or sentimental jewelry. That’s how a lot of dealers today make their money. You don’t have to wear it outside your clothes. It’s worn next to the heart. It’s closed, compartmentalized, and if you want to put someone in there you love, you can do so without breaking any social conventions. Lockets were popular during the ’20s and ’30s, and they still are today.
Things like rings, which can’t be hidden, have never regained their popularity. But people still make mourning jewelry. Hair-working industries still exist. I believe there is a shop in America and another in Sweden. There may be more. But you can’t simply walk into a jewelry store and say, “I want a mourning ring.” These days it’s much more common to buy the locket. In fact, locket patents from the 1880s are still in production.
Collectors Weekly: What are some of your favorite eras and types of mourning jewelry?
Peters: The 19th century for sure, Queen Victoria’s period, from 1851 to about 1880. Mourning jewelry was the height of fashion back then. In the 1940s and ’50s it’s fashionable again in some degree due to the high mortality rate during World War II.
As for type, I can walk into any junk store in the Czech Republic and usually find some sort of hairwork piece—a bracelet, necklace, anything really. Women did a lot of hairworking at home. Pieces found their way across borders. It was fashionable, and that was the key.
In the mid-19th century, 50 tons of hair a year were imported to jewelers in the U.K., just for the purpose of replicating colors schemes in hairwork pieces. Northern hair tends to be lighter while hair from places like France tends to be darker—the hairwork-jewelry industry needed both. Sisters in convents would grow their hair long, chop it off, and sell it. It was all treated and woven together.
Burial societies were wealthy and powerful back then. The insurance companies we have today developed from the burial societies of the 19th century. Even the poorest of the poor would give most of their wages to have a decent funeral and all the affectations of mourning. A pauper’s burial was socially unacceptable. What a concept! That’s incredibly 19th century.
I think mourning jewelry from earlier eras is prettier. There is some beautiful stuff from the burgeoning mourning industry in the late 17th century, especially the pieces with crystals or the cipher hairwork pieces with someone’s initials woven in. Then it evolved into the neoclassical stuff, which is beautiful, and not hard to come by.
But I’m a Victorian fan. Mourning jewelry of that era was made for people from any level of society. There were lots cheap pieces made in the 19th century, pieces with pinchbeck, which gave the jewelry a metallic flair.
Even if you were really poor you could afford to show your grief by having a ring made out of hair, perhaps with a little base metal buckle on top. It was a cheaper way of expressing mourning, and there were a lot of people to mourn. Life expectancy in Victorian England was 40 years. The death of children was quite common.
Collectors Weekly: From a collector’s standpoint is mourning jewelry from the Victorian era the most sought after?
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An engraved portrait of George Washington is the centerpiece of this gold memorial ring from about 1800.
Peters: I think what you collect is really personal. Some people gravitate more to the neoclassical stuff, while some only collect American pieces. I think the Victorian stuff is the best way to get a foot in the door if you’re a new collector or if you want to learn more about what the industry was like. It’s very accessible and still very reasonably priced. A good piece for a new collection isn’t necessarily the most beautiful or expensive. It doesn’t have to be encrusted with jewels. That’s a good thing.
If you put a piece in front of me that is loaded with diamonds but has no sentiment, and then another that is made out of hair, I’m going to go for the piece with the hair. That was someone’s life and love. That’s what it’s all about for me.
Miniature portraits are entirely different. As a collector, I face a lot of competition from other miniature portrait collectors. They’re very hungry for anything with a miniature portrait in it. Miniature portraiture covers everything—sentimental, memorial, and mourning. The late 18th-century stuff in particular is quite collectible and expensive. It was also well constructed.
Typically, miniature portraits were less expensive in the Victorian era. Salesmen would travel around with cases full of pre-painted miniatures, and they would tailor and tweak each portrait for the buyer. Sometimes the paintings were amateurish, but most of the time they were beautiful and lifelike. They’re pieces of art. They belong in museums.
Collectors Weekly: What are the different forms of mourning jewelry?
Peters: It was so broad—hatpins, cufflinks, watches, watch fobs, rings, necklaces, earrings. There were mourning warehouses in the 19th century that specialized in mourning paraphernalia. The Chase Mourning Warehouse was probably the most notable one. They had nearly everything. You could get a pin that was worn on an Albert chain with some sort of memorial motif on it. The list wasn’t endless, but it was quite extensive.
You can see some really unusual stuff. The watches were beautiful, but there aren’t many available. The handles of walking sticks were often tipped with a skull, which in some circles is still in fashion today. Today, it’s sometimes hard to discern which era a skull piece is from because there were so many semi-revival periods.
It’s more difficult to find pure mourning accessories for men because during the latter years, the armbands and rings made for men weren’t completely mandatory. Besides, the costume of the day was already black, or mostly black.
For women, there were mourning versions of everything—jewelry, of course, but also skirts and accessories, from gloves to ribbons to hats. It was such a fashion. As long as the item could be black, as long as it could be someway used for the regalia of mourning, it was available.
Collectors Weekly: Can you tell us a bit more about the different metals used to make the jewelry?
Peters: Gold was the most common followed by high-nickel-content pinchbeck, and then things like raw gold. Brass was used, but the further down the scale you got from something that mimicked gold, the less ideal it became. Different metals were made for different social strata. Gold pieces are probably the most sought after. The higher the gold content, the better it is. Most Victorian pieces were 9 karat, I think.
They used silver to a much lesser degree. It’s much harder to find silver pieces. Victorian silver wasn’t really the most popular of metals until about 1880, and it had to develop. I collect Victorian silver. The pieces were a bit showier. They’re regal, beautiful, and bold. Lockets are common in silver, but the “in memory of” inscription in them is pretty rare. I haven’t seen many of them.
I’ve seen silver pieces with black enamel and pearls but without the common symbols of mourning, like the forget-me-nots. You’ve got to wonder whether it was created for the purpose of mourning or for sentimentality.
Collectors Weekly: Were gemstones also used?
Peters: Absolutely. They were the primary focus of sentimental pieces. The gems ran the spectrum from rubies to topaz. For mourning, crystal and diamonds were probably the most common gems. There was a lot of what they call Stuart Crystal from 1650 to 1750. Crystal was used a lot in that period. It was multifaceted, so it caught the light like a diamond.
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Here, hairwork is found on the back of a brooch, whose front depicts sentimental rather than mourning imagery.
Under the crystal, there was always hairwork or stretched material with a gold cipher of someone’s initials. There might be a little enamel motif such as the skull and crossbones, angels, or something like that. The same was true for ribbon slides, rings, and brooches. Ribbon slides were very common.
By the Georgian period, let’s say the late 18th century, the same sorts of materials were used. Most stones and gems were there for a reason. They all had meaning and symbolism. But as the early 19th century wore on, a lot of the stones were costume. The actual gem itself wasn’t used, but it gave the impression of the gem. That was quite common. Even costume “regard” and “dearest” rings were made. They were just as fashionable.
A lot of the time, the choice of gems was decided by trade agreements. For example, if an agreement was struck with a diamond mine, you’d see an increase in diamonds being used in jewelry. People often think that diamonds were the most common expensive gems but pearls were more prolific, especially during the early 19th century. As the neoclassical art started to disappear, the focus shifted to hair, which was often displayed inside a piece of glass and then surrounded by pearls.
The choice of gems had to do with the stages of mourning, which changed through the 18th and 19th centuries. In the first period people wore black, hairwork, and whatnot. In the second period, they could introduce a little bit of color like purple. That’s where amethysts came in.
Collectors Weekly: What about jet jewelry?
Peters: Jet was and is quite popular. It was most commonly mined in Whitby, England. The jet industry goes back to Roman times, I believe. It’s basically a kind of a coal. A lot of other materials were made to mimic jet, like gutta-percha. They’d cut it down and facet it to get a sparkle. Then it would be used in bracelets and necklaces. It was very popular in Victorian times, and not just for mourning. It was just a fashionable item.
There was also a glass version of jet, which was cheaper option for people. You see a lot of both in brooches and especially bracelets. Bracelets were worn prominently in mourning dress. A woman in first-stage mourning would be adorned in jet and wore a black bracelet over the top of some dresses. The jet industry still exists to some degree. But it really symbolized that grand Victorian focus on black as a main motif, especially during the mourning era in the second half of the 19th century.
You could also buy a piece of jet carved into a castle or other shapes as a sentimental token or a little memorial. These items were not made only for mourning, but you can find heavy mourning ones. You might find a beautiful jet cameo with a weeping woman carved on it, or a sentimental “faith, hope and charity” piece. The pointing hand is quite common in late Victorian stuff. It was such a huge industry that it nearly exhausted Whitby.
Collectors Weekly: Did symbolism play a major role in mourning and memorial jewelry?
Peters: Absolutely. The symbolism of mourning is probably the easiest to grasp. It’s blatant, with weeping willows and other obvious motifs. It becomes more difficult to decode the sentimentality of the neoclassical period. You might see a piece with two lovers next to a bird in an open cage. Does the cage symbolize death? Is the bird a child? Does it represent that a child is about to be born? Are the people actually two lovers?
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The cherubs holding a crown on this English locket suggest a connection to royalty.
A broken column means life cut short; an unbroken column means eternity, basically. The snake eating its own tail also means eternity, or eternal love to some degree. That was symbolism in that era.
In the Victorian period when a lot more gems were used, the symbolism is a little more blatant. The snake is quite common. Queen Victoria liked snake jewelry. You might see a black enameled snake on a piece or a forget-me-not.
They also appropriated the memento mori symbols: the skull and crossbones; Death holding a scythe, an hourglass, or both; angels with cherubs playing trumpets signaling the gates of heaven. Symbolism is probably the richest aspect of collecting memorial, sentimental, or mourning jewelry.
I find that most people project their modern symbolic values on a piece. They don’t consider its cultural and historical significance. That clouds the message and doesn’t really resonate with what the piece was meant to do.
A lot of it actually stems from mainstream art. If you start looking at jewelry, and then go to The National Gallery, you’ll see a lot of those symbols in many of the paintings. They’re all there. The mourning jewelers didn’t really bring anything new to the table. The symbols and motifs were part of the broader art movement, of what was popular at the time.
Collectors Weekly: Please tell us more about miniature portraiture.
Peters: Miniature portraiture tends to be more sentimental, obviously. Sometimes it was commissioned for a loved one. If you gave someone a portrait, maybe a young woman who was going away for a while, it might be regarded as a declaration of marriage. So there were rules about what the pieces meant, who could wear them, and when they should be worn. I mentioned the Charles I pieces and what they represented: That’s a case in which miniature portraiture was about death but it also related to the life of the man.
There were quite a few miniature portraits of Charles II, often in court. A lot of the pieces were anachronistic. Some were just design studies produced by art students—there was a lot of that going around. Silhouettes were also quite popular.
Miniature portraiture declined and almost disappeared as photography became more available. But photography expanded memorial jewelry, as lockets and things to hold photographs got a little bigger to accommodate the pictures. All of a sudden people could wear things with their loved one’s portrait. They didn’t have to sit down for several weeks to have it made and pay a premium to a respected artist. And as photography became less expensive, it gave people of limited means an affordable way of remembering their loved ones.
Collectors Weekly: Were specific jewelers known for making mourning and memorial jewelry?
Peters: Not really. Most jewelers handled it. The English pieces are hallmarked. Those are obviously the easiest to track down. The trend was so broad and culturally fashionable that it’s hard to pin down one maker as being the best.
The makers of the American stuff are harder to identify, but you can find the year for the Victorian material by looking at catalogs of the day. It’s pretty easy. They liked a certain style. I can use the documentation of the era to see if someone made a certain design, such as a Victorian buckle ring with hairwork on the inside. That was a very common piece. A lot of rings came out of Chester in the U.K. That’s where the industry was. They had the molds and so they could just pump it out.
Collectors Weekly: Are certain forms of mourning jewelry more difficult to collect than others?
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In this French watch fob, a husband’s dedication to his late wife reads, “the further apart, the tighter the bond.”
Peters: The ones to be careful of are the degradable and precious pieces. Not just in jewelry, but anything. For example, there were mourning teddy bears and other things like that—things that rot and are a little more obscure. They need better care, and there aren’t many left. Similarly, a lot of the materials used for mourning wear, like crepe and silks, just don’t last.
Hair wreaths can also be problematic. I have quite a few. In fact, anything to do with hairwork that hasn’t been treated properly may degrade and start to lose its consistency. Wood things, like the folk art pieces and the samplers, are really at the mercy of the elements and just don’t age well. Hair is usually the first thing to go in the jewelry, but I’ve pulled pieces from a 400-year-old box that were in beautiful condition. It’s really a matter of how they’ve been stored.
Ivory is the other big one. I’ve had a lot of problems with it. Keeping it at a steady temperature and constant level of humidity is really important. It swells and cracks in the wrong climate. And once it’s cracked, it’s not coming back.
Humidity is something to watch out for in miniature portraits, too. At the times in my life when I haven’t been living in the right environment for these pieces, I won’t buy them. I’m their caretaker. Most of them are dedicated to other people. When I go, it all goes to a museum or somewhere, so I want them to last forever.
Collectors Weekly: What are some of the most common mourning jewelry inscriptions?
Peters: The most common is “in memory of,” and it’s also my favorite. It can be found in bands even before the development of the dictionary. “Not lost but gone before” is also quite popular.
Most of the time these pieces have a dedication to whoever died and the age they were when they died. It tells you when they died and maybe when they were born. It might also have the names of their children. Those sorts of things obviously make my job of researching each piece easier and more fun.
Other pieces, such as the ones with hairwork, bear no sentiment, no dedication, but they do have symbols. So you have to figure out what it means. What’s the color scheme? If it’s not black, white, or blue enamel, what does it mean? Blue enamel, for example, was used to express sentimental feelings, but blue was also used for royalty. White enamel was commonly used for the death of a child or an unmarried woman. Black obviously signified death.
I love it when a collection can remain together. A woman in London was selling her entire family’s collection of jewelry and other things dating back to about 1760. I made her an offer for the whole lot—her kids didn’t want it. I said, “I’ll take everything you’ve got. Just write down the provenance of each piece, who it was for, and what year you believe it was made in.” She wrote down her entire family history right then and there. It was brilliant because I had miniatures, compacts, rings, bracelets, and slides—all sorts of fabulous things.
Collectors Weekly: So, just to be clear, is mourning jewelry considered a type of funeralia?
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This Victorian hairwork bracelet featured a weave that stretched to fit the wearer. The clasp is neo-Rococo.
Peters: Yes. Some pieces are obviously made with the funeral in mind. In the 16th century, it wasn’t unheard of to leave an allocation in your will for the construction of mourning jewelry to be given to the loved ones at the funeral. To me that’s funeralia. That’s an accessory of mourning and part of the pomp and showiness of the funeral itself.
There were other things, though, that may be considered mourning but not funeralia. For example, I don’t consider the neoclassical stuff to be real funeralia, but it all falls under that umbrella. Funeralia, itself, is another world. You have the actual cemetery, the burial, and God knows what. It has so many facets. I think the jewelry fits in there in some way.
Collectors Weekly: Is there a vibrant community of mourning and memorial jewelry collectors?
Peters: Yes. My website and my travels have brought together a lot of very knowledgeable collectors from around the world. And I thank them so much for all of their input into the website and into my studies of mourning, sentimental, and memorial jewelry.
We show each other different pieces. One of my goals is to catalog, teach, and talk about these pieces—to lessen the mystique and romanticism of mourning, memorial, and sentimental jewelry, which has led to negative connotations. There’s so much cultural and social history there. I don’t think the negative stuff is necessary.
Collectors Weekly: Do you have any advice for an aspiring collector?
Peters: The first thing I’d say is to get experience. Physically get out there, touch the pieces. It’s also important to go to all the websites, from eBay to Ruby Lane. You don’t have to buy everything. In fact, that can lead to a lot of trouble because the collecting impulse can overcome the quest for knowledge, which should be the first goal.
Look at as many individual pieces as you can. Familiarize yourself with both the high and the low ends of the market. Read as much as you can. Touch, feel, and really get intimate with the pieces. Use your eyes and learn to identify what you are looking at. That will be your foundation as a collector. When I was quite young, I remember going to some of the best antiques jewelers in the country. They showed me everything, including all their most magnificent pieces. That was an education, and it didn’t cost me a thing.
Kazimiera
09-20-2018, 08:21 PM
Mourning Fashion and Etiquette in the Victorian Era
Source: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/09/16/mourning-fashion/
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When Prince Albert succumbed to illness on a bleak December day in 1861, this marked the beginning of Queen Victoria’s period of mourning, which ended with her death some four decades later, in 1901.
The Queen never got over the loss of spouse of 21 years. Her prince’s death was premature, at the age of 42, so she stuck to dark outfits for the remainder of her years.
At the same time, this tragedy within the royal household was sort of booster to mourning dresses and etiquette — a lucrative business on its own right.
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Queen Victoria in 1890.
Crępe, which was the most used fabric for sewing mourning attire, was used in such quantities that by the end of the 19th century, British fabric manufacturers Courtaulds had amassed a fortune by selling this type of textile alone.
As mourners needed to be supplied with proper clothing quickly, there were also numerous vendors who catered for their needs. In London, one of the most popular was Jay’s Mourning Warehouse, which opened in 1841.
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Girl in a mourning dress holding a framed photograph of her father, who presumably died during the American Civil War.
Mourning etiquette was not so rigid in the early years of the Victorian era, but after Queen Victoria’s own Annus horribilis in 1861, things changed. Principles were indeed reinforced. What came out of the royal household was copied at every other layer of society, including the working classes.
The general rule was that a full mourning period over a loved one lasted a year, though the period was sometimes extended to two years, or as was the case with the Queen — it felt like it hardly ever ended.
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Elderly woman, possibly dressed in mourning clothes, 1890-1900.
The full mourning period was coupled with a half-mourning period which lasted for an additional two years. Victoria herself sported half-mourning dresses, overwhelmingly dark except little bits of white or purple, decades after Prince Albert’s demise.
It was toughest for widowed women, who were expected never to abandon their dark garments while grieving, as well as avoiding any social gatherings or events that had a hint of joy (as if this would aid the loss).
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Victorian-style mourning dress with bustle.
The widow’s outfit was known as the widow’s weeds. While it was all sewn in crępe, the collars and the cuffs of shirts were edged with black piping too. Buttons were black and jewelry was also supposed to be dark, such as black pearls or jet-stones for those who could afford them. Those who couldn’t used cheaper imitations.
Another popular option was using a lock of hair belonging to the dearly departed. The relic was often woven in a beautiful knot and worn as a brooch, with it the memory of the lost one.
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Mourning jewelry.
If a grieving person owned, for example, a pair of white gloves, these needed some adjustment. Embroidering with black thread would have done the trick.
A rare exception would have been the funeral of a young deceased girl, where white was among the acceptable colors in the outfit combinations, as it symbolized purity. However, this practice somehow disappeared.
To adjust to all such requirements of the abundant mourning etiquette required money and a manual. For the wealthier, a mourning period was more or less another chance to communicate their economic standing in society.
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Queen Victoria with the five surviving children of her daughter, Princess Alice, dressed in mourning clothing for their mother and their sister Princess Marie in early 1879.
In case of multiple deaths in a household over a short period of time, it meant mourning phases extended for several years. All regular clothing during this period were stored away. By the time the mourning ritual was through, it was no surprise if those stored-away clothes had gone entirely out of fashion.
On the benefits of mourning warehouses, it was bad luck to keep attire at home after the mourning was through. The used black clothes were discarded. If someone else died afterward, the required outfit was bought anew — if you had the money to so often change your wardrobe.
Those who were unable to afford to purchase any black garments dyed and used what they already had.
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The five daughters of Prince Albert wore black dresses and posed for a portrait with his statue following his death in 1861.
Those not so familiar with the correct etiquette were able to check in any of the popular household manuals that were published at the time. Women, who stood out as leaders of the household’s mourning procedures, normally kept a copy of these manuals at home. Cassell’s and The Queen were among the most popular ones (so you could learn to mourn like a queen).
Such help books thoroughly instructed the reader on the most appropriate ways to mourn, among other tips on general dressing. There were tons of little rules that reflected on the sorrow and the sentiment of loss. And everyone was expected to abide by these when someone near and dear to them died.
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Woman’s mourning dress (1867-1869): silk bodice and skirt with black fringe, white lace cuffs, and white guaze collar.
The amount of black to be worn was dictated by the various stages of mourning, such as the full mourning year and the half-mourning stage that followed.
In specific cases, women were able to remarry past their sixth month of mourning, when there was a need: If the husband was abroad for years and missing, or perhaps suffered and passed due to a long, exhausting disease, and the woman had children to feed.
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Woman in black
Other than this, it was acceptable for a woman to adopt a little grey or little purple on her outfit once she entered the half-mourning period. At this point, she was also able to go back to social gatherings.
The Workwoman’s Guide, published in 1840, details expected mourning time for loss of other relatives. A parent was to grieve up to half a year or a full year, and the same principle stuck for children older than ten. Below the age of ten, children were mourned up to six months. An infant was mourned six weeks at the least.
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Illustration of woman in mourning.
Siblings were mourned in between six and eight months, and uncles and aunties from three and six months. Friends were mourned three weeks at the least.
And men? It was a bit easier for them, at least with the outfit. A normal-looking dark suit combined with black gloves and dark-colored cravat would have been appropriate enough. A black ribbon was sometimes worn as an armband, too.
Children themselves attending a funeral were not expected to wear any mourning clothes, though they were sometimes dressed in white clothes.
These rigid principles of deep mourning were somewhat abandoned once the Edwardian era commenced. Even more impactful was World War I. When the war was over in 1918, it seemed the entire world was mourning, and such rigidity didn’t really soothe anyone anymore.
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