Bereavement bling
It’s one thing to exchange a locket with a lover. Quite another to sport a bracelet constructed entirely of human hair. What the Dickens were the Victorians on, asks Kathryn Reilly
When it came to dealing with grief, the Victorians didn’t do things by halves. Mourning jewellery was a socially open and deeply fashionable acknowledgment of loss, commonly worn by bereaved loved ones as a means of coping. At its height, when a wave of hysteria swept from Europe to the States in the mid-19th century, ever more elaborate and breath-taking pieces were created both by professional jewellers and in the parlours of respectable homes.
We’re not just talking about a bit of plaited hair here (although there’s a lot of that about) but real feats of imagination and skill, the most intricate going beyond fashion accessories into mounted wall-pieces. So perhaps it’s not surprising the number of collectors of antique memorial jewellery is growing and prices rocketing. In January 2017 a 17th-century ring containing hair realised $40,000 at Sotheby’s. Granted, that’s old for a jewel. But still…
So when did it begin? And why?
Hair has been used in rituals and for keepsakes for as long as we’ve been cutting it. It wasn’t until after the Renaissance that its link with death properly started to develop, when it became the norm to bequeath your hair as an important and valuable inheritance. Nelson, as he lay dying aboard HMS Victory, requested, “Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair.” Napoleon asked for his hair to be made into bracelets for all his relatives. Pepys left 123 rings to be distributed at his funeral, many containing his hair. Charles II reportedly had a watch fob made from the pubic hair of his multiple mistresses – hopefully before they shuffled off their mortal coils.
While pieces made before the 17th century are generally termed memento mori jewellery – a reminder of mortality in general rather than in memory of a specific person – the first great wave of personal memorial jewellery was triggered by Charles I’s execution. Royalists wore rings with snippets of the King’s hair secreted inside to “keep the faith”. Non-Royalist exceptions also survive, including plague-era lockets, as seen in the impressive collection at The Fitzwilliam Museum.
It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the trend intensified. In 1861 Queen Victoria became inconsolable after losing her mother, then her beloved husband of 21 years. Across the pond, the Civil War turned many a love token into a mourning jewel. Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 only heightened the mania. Out came the black robes, shawls, headdresses and jet – any other gemstone was frowned upon. High birth and death rates, the unchallenged spread of infection, rampant infant mortality, war and pestilence were all part of everyday life. Today we tend to think of the Victorians as mawkish sentimentalists, but we need only look at their classic literature to see evidence of their more morbid appetites. The Mill On The Floss, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights and not least Dracula – all piled the fatalist gloom on with a trowel.
Since rituals of mourning had to be seen to be respected, the display of grief became performative, even competitive. At home mirrors were covered, clocks stopped, the coffin left open. Everyone wore black. Widows were further expected to cover their faces with a dark veil for three months, spending the next two years in full mourning dress (“widow’s weeds”). Even after that they could only move into half mourning and lighten up with greys and mauves. Bright colours were banished from their wardrobe forever. Once this mourning process had finished, a piece of jewellery acted as a permanent reminder of that particular loss. Queen Victoria insisted that ladies at court wear only mourning jewellery for a full 26 years after Albert’s death.
As well as being about sentimentality and demonstrating your social status, mourning pieces were a way of keeping the dead at the forefront of the mind. Only the wealthy could justify the expense of portraiture and photography was in its infancy. Jewellery, however, was within the reach of the middle classes, and so an industry sprang up. At the most macabre end, some jewels were adorned with baby’s teeth. Even the grieving Victorians had their limits: not surprisingly, this didn’t catch on.
Hair, though, is different. It’s very nature – removable, renewable, springing from the body but not of it – made it a more acceptable material to work with. After all, what’s wrong with shaping non-living biologic fibres into a “portable shrine”? In life, locks of hair were exchanged between lovers, upon marriage, when soldiers or sailors went to war and when babies arrived. But it was after death that it became symbolic.
Melding the precious and the corporeal serves as a powerful reminder of our brief time on earth. Transforming hair into something substantial enough to sit alongside a jewel became a valued skill. There were several publications instructing on the latest fashions and equipment available for the serious hair worker. There was another major advantage to doing it yourself. Fraud protection. Some “professionals” used other people’s hair to supplement or replace that of the person being remembered. By the mid-19th century, 50 tons of human hair was being imported into England each year to keep up with jewellers’ demands. Worse still, sometimes horsehair was introduced to the mix. Tragic, if grimly comic, to think some poor widow may have been sporting a broach of their late husband that was actually 60% thoroughbred tail.
So far, so goth. But who could be interested in such relics nowadays? Hayden Peters, for one, a collector for over 20 years and curator of the highly informative website Art of Mourning (which attracts 600-plus visitors a day). “People appreciate the love in the jewels, not just the morbidity,” says Peters. “Collectors are caretakers for these pieces of living history, carrying them safely into the future for new generations to understand and explore. These are historical artefacts that show how life was lived at the grassroots level – they have more to teach us than any textbook.”
Would we make it today, though? The answer is we already are. There’s one in California, other jewellers working with human hair, and one who works with nothing else in truly elaborate (possibly alarming) ways. The latest fad – so widespread you can even get it from the Coop – is to incorporate the ashes of the deceased into a jewel. Ultimately, it’s as much about craftsmanship as it is remembrance, the creativity of the designs a wonder to behold. For pieces of dead matter, these jewels sparkle with life.
Want to see some examples? Have a look here.
Article first published on https://www.passingboxes.com/