The Victorian Era

What Were Victorian Mourning Brooches?

Article · Fashion & Dress · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Victorian mourning brooches were one of the most distinctive and most poignant items of jewellery of the period. The mourning brooch, which was worn as a memorial to a dead relative or friend, was a major industry in the Victorian era, and the great jewellery houses of the period, including the firms of R & S Garrard, C & R Blacker, Hancock, Hunt & Roskell, J C Vickery, Phillips Brothers, and G & S Bruford, all produced mourning brooches of various types. The history of mourning brooches is examined in Victorian Accessories and Jewelry, and the broader context of mourning is examined in Death and Mourning in the Victorian Era.

The Origins of the Mourning Brooch

The mourning brooch had its origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The memorial jewellery of the seventeenth century was openly funereal, decorated with skulls, coffins, and other emblems of death, and it often enclosed a small lock of the hair of the deceased. In the eighteenth century the imagery softened, and brooches and rings decorated with urns, weeping willows, and mourning figures, often painted in sepia on ivory and incorporating the hair of the dead, became fashionable tokens of remembrance.

The mourning brooch of the Victorian period was a development of this earlier tradition, and it drew on the new and newly fashionable materials of the period, including jet, gutta-percha, vulcanite, French jet, and black enamel. It was also shaped by the ideas of the period: the intense sentimentalism of the age and its elaborate culture of death, mourning, memory, and family.

The Materials of the Mourning Brooch

The materials of the Victorian mourning brooch were many and varied. The most important material was jet, a hard, black, fossilised wood, which was found in large quantities in the Whitby area of Yorkshire and which was worked into a wide range of mourning jewellery. The jet industry of Whitby was one of the great industries of the period, and the great jet workers of the period, including the firm of T & E Berry, the Wills family, and a number of other firms, all produced jet jewellery of various types. Jet was at the height of its popularity after the death of Prince Albert in 1861, when the long mourning of Queen Victoria set the fashion for jet jewellery, and the Whitby jet industry peaked in the 1860s and 1870s.

Jet had its cheaper substitutes. Gutta-percha and vulcanite, hard black mouldable materials, were used for mourning jewellery from the mid-Victorian period, and French jet, a form of black glass, imitated the true Whitby stone at a fraction of the price. Pinchbeck, a gold-coloured alloy of copper and zinc, similarly stood in for gold mounts, making mourning brooches affordable for the middle class. Black enamel, black onyx, bog oak, and human hair completed the characteristic palette of materials.

The Forms of the Mourning Brooch

The forms of the Victorian mourning brooch were many and varied. The brooch was generally small, most often a circle, an oval, a rectangle, or a lozenge, and it carried the funerary and sentimental motifs of the period: the cross, the angel, the weeping willow, the urn, the forget-me-not, and the clasped hand. The brooch was usually set with a lock of the hair of the deceased, and sometimes with a miniature portrait or an inscription recording the name and the date of death.

The mourning brooch of the early Victorian period was often a circle or an oval, with a glazed compartment in the centre containing a lock of the hair of the deceased or a small portrait. The mourning brooch of the mid-Victorian period was often a rectangle or a lozenge, with a similar glazed compartment. The mourning brooch of the late Victorian period was often a heart, a hand, a glove, a shoe, or a flower, and the brooch was set with diamonds, pearls, black onyx, black enamel, jet, gutta-percha, or pinchbeck.

The term mourning brooch is used loosely to cover a wide range of memorial jewellery, including rings, lockets, bracelets, watch chains, necklaces, and earrings. The “brooch” was only the most common form, and the mourning ring, often set with a lock of the hair of the deceased under a crystal, was an equally familiar object.

The Sentimental Brooch

The sentimental brooch, which was a development of the mourning brooch, was also a major industry in the period. The sentimental brooch was worn as a token of love, of friendship, of remembrance, or of fidelity, and it was generally a small brooch, often in the shape of a heart, a hand, a glove, a shoe, a basket, a quiver, an arrow, a flame, a star, a moon, a sun, a serpent, a dove, a cross, a crucifix, an angel, a cherub, or a flower. The sentimental brooch was set with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, amethysts, garnets, turquoises, opals, moonstones, coral, amber, jet, gutta-percha, pinchbeck, gold, silver, platinum, copper, brass, bronze, iron, steel, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, horn, wood, hair, enamel, or porcelain.

The Use of the Mourning Brooch

The mourning brooch was worn by both men and women, pinned to the dress, the bodice, the collar, the lapel, or the shawl. It was worn at the funeral and the memorial service, through the long months of full and half mourning that followed a death, and on the anniversaries of the loss; a widow might continue to wear her mourning brooch for the rest of her life, as Queen Victoria did after the death of Prince Albert.

The most famous Queen Victoria mourning brooch was the onyx and diamond brooch given to her by the City of London on the occasion of Prince Albert’s death in 1861. The brooch, a large oval of polished onyx bordered with brilliant-cut diamonds, was set in gold and worn by the Queen for the rest of her life, and it became the model for the more elaborate mourning brooches of the late Victorian years.