Mourning brooches are wearable tokens of grief. While modern Western sensibilities might find this practice grim, from the 17th to the early 20th centuries, it was a highly respected custom and a highly profitable industry. The evolution of mourning brooches, and indeed other mourning wear, reveals how society’s relationship with death changed over three distinct eras.
Mourning in the 17th to 18th Century
In general, early mourning jewellery wasn’t strictly about personal sadness; it was a religious reminder of mortality. Known as Memento Mori (Latin for “Remember you must die”), these pieces were often commissioned in advance of an individuals death. The wealthy would leave money in their wills for friends and family to buy matching mourning rings or brooches. Rings were the most popular at the time though sometimes they were made into slides designed to be threaded on a ribbon and worn on the wrist. They were decorated with grim, macabre symbols like tiny coffins, skeletons, hourglasses and gravedigger spades. Usually made of gold with white enamel (signifying an unmarried or young person) or black enamel (for married/older adults).
The Late 18th Century
By the late 1700s, the grim skeletons disappeared, replaced by the sentimental art of the Georgian era. Society shifted from fearing judgment in the afterlife to celebrating romanticised grief. Death was seen as a reintegration with the natural world (dust to dust) and was sentimentalized in art and poetry alike. This softened ideal led to the mourning jewellery like hand-painted miniature scenes under glass. Common motifs included a grieving woman weeping under a weeping willow tree or leaning against an urn or obelisk. Instead of regular paint, artists began using sepia paint mixed with ground-up hair belonging to the deceased to paint these scenes.
The 19th Century
It was the famous mourning of Queen Victoria that truly saw a boom in this type of memorialisation. When her husband Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria entered a state of permanent mourning that lasted 40 years. She wore entirely black and popularised strict mourning dress codes across the British Empire.
During this era, brooches became a mandatory fashion statement for anyone grieving a loss. Whitby jet—a fossilized driftwood that can be polished into a deep, matte, or glossy black—became incredibly sought after because it met the strict court requirements for early-stage mourning.
Hairwork became a massive cottage industry. Brooches were built with a hollow glass compartment in the centre. The deceased person’s hair would be intricately braided, woven into a basketweave pattern, or shaped into curls or flower petals. The mourning jewellery extended much further than just brooches. Earrings, necklaces and rings were popular pieces. Mourning clothing was also popularised as grievers were expected to dress in a certain way so set periods of time depending on how close they were to the deceased.
The decline
The invention of photography and its accessibility in later years led to the decline of mourning jewellery. Hair was no longer the preferred medium and the onset of war only sped up the decline. Photographs rapidly became the most common way to remember the dead in a time of war and mass casualties.
