Unboxing Victorian Mourning: Dress, Human Hair Jewellery & Postmortem Photos

Mourning the death of close family or friends has always been marked by ceremony. Clothing, jewellery and accessories have been used throughout time to communicate grief and to help remember a loved one. Today we'll be looking at some beautiful, touching and maybe even bizarre mourning objects from our collection. The Victorian era is characterised by the image of Queen Victoria shrouded in black perpetually mourning the death of her beloved Albert. This cult of mourning filtered down through society creating a fashion for black with everything from clothing to jewellery to stationery. In the Victorian period it was essential to have the appropriate clothing for each stage of the mourning process. A widow could mourn her husband for up to two and a half years. The initial stage of deep or full mourning which could last up to a year and a day would mean a wardrobe of completely black, limited jewellery and possibly a veil. This incredibly beautiful mourning outfit consists of a matching bodice and skirt that's made of black silk with pleated silk ruffles and sequined lace trimmings. The safest way to handle an extremely delicate object like this is with clean hands, they give us more dexterity than wearing gloves. What you can see here is the back of the skirt with the incredibly long train with all these ruffles and sequined lace. This exquisite bodice is decorated with silk organza leaf shapes, sequins and beading on the lace, pendant pom-poms in silk chiffon, flowing sleeves of ruffled chiffon and a ruffled waistband and bow of ruffled silk. The sequins would have been too glitzy for full mourning and this dress would have probably been worn by the bereaved when they returned to society as part of the half mourning period. This amazing outfit belonged to a woman called Maude Riley. We don't know who she was but we do know that her descendant who gave us the dress wore the bodice with jeans when partying in the 1980s. If I was going out tonight I would want to wear something like this. The objects in front of us here are all made of jet. Jet naturally exists in this very deep dark colour which is where we get the phrase jet black from and it makes it particularly suitable for mourning jewellery. Jet is a semi-precious stone made from fossilised wood, particularly the wood of the monkey puzzle tree. The best quality jet can be found in Whitby, a small town in Yorkshire in the north of England. When Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria wore jet jewellery to his funeral and almost exclusively wore jet jewellery afterwards. This started a craze for wearing jet jewellery throughout society and particularly for mourning jewellery. Jet in its natural state was quite matte and dull which makes it particularly apt for mourning jewellery such as in this example of the roach but the skilled Whitby craftsman could also give it a high polish such as this large pendant here to give it more of a sheen. These two necklaces have a chain link design similar to metalwork jewellery but carved out of much more fragile jet. These chain link designs may suggest a bond between the bereaved and the departed. By the late Victorian period the demand for jet mourning jewellery was so high that Whitby's natural resources became depleted. Other jewellery designers wanted a slice of this lucrative market so came up with an alternative to real Whitby jet. This extremely beautiful tiara is made from what is known as French jet or imitation jet. French jet would have been a cheaper material to work with because it was simply black glass. As the bereaved started to rejoin society and attend formal events it would be acceptable to wear black pieces such as this. This tiara is really beautifully made with a very creative shell design pattern. The scalloped shell shapes are perhaps a nod to Whitby jet's coastal origins. All of these jewellery pieces have something unusual about them. They're all made with an element of human hair. This may seem morbid or unsettling to us today but in the Victorian period hair jewellery was a big craze. So this is an example of mourning jewellery likely made in the 1850s or 1860s when using hair for mourning jewellery was particularly popular. This example is a brooch and you can see the fastening on the back and mourning jewellery in the Victorian period often came in the form of the brooch because it was worn close to the heart. The bereaved might commission a specialist jeweller or hair artisan to make a piece from the hair of their lost loved one. So this jewellery piece has a nice bow shape which is a very popular motif in Victorian mourning jewellery as well as these little tassels at the end all made from human hair and a small piece of gold holding it together at the top. This example here shows brown hair. We don't know if it belonged to a man or a woman but we do know how it was made. To achieve this bow shape the hair has to be treated to then manipulate it into different shapes. The hair is first boiled in sugar and then the hair is woven around a bobbin or a stick to create this intricate lattice pattern. We imagine the wear of this brooch might feel comforted wearing the hair of their loved one close to their heart. This is another example of Victorian mourning jewellery using hair. This time it's preserved behind glass and encased in a gold frame. This example uses hair in a different technique. The hair is meant to appear like feathers, a kind of fleur-de-lis motif here with pearls attaching at the bottom and golden thread across the bottom of the frame. We know that this example could have been worn either as a pendant or as a brooch. We have the brooch fastening here on the back with a clasp as well as a hoop for a necklace over here. The inscription's written in tiny cursive writing on the back and we know that this brooch was presented by Elizabeth in memory of her dearly beloved sister who departed this life on 20th June 1847. This is an example of an earlier mourning keepsake likely made in the 1790s. It shows a neoclassical scene with all the typical mourning motifs including a tomb, an urn, willows and a weeping maiden. The inscription at the top reads sacred to the memory of dear parents and on the back is a piece of brown hair which we imagine to be the hair of the parents of the person who commissioned this. These types of scenes were very popular at this time and we have an album here showing designs for hair devices from 1789 showing the different kind of imagery you could choose for a jewellery piece like this. We have another example from the same period showing a similar scene but this time with hair included in the landscape. So we can see two figures alongside a tomb that says rest in peace and at the bottom are these tiny pieces of hair that have been manipulated to look like grass as well as at the top for the leaves on the trees. Here we have a portrait miniature. We think that this might be of the British-Italian artist Maria Cosway but if we turn it around you can see these two incredibly blonde locks of hair. We know that the artist passed away in 1838 and this could have been a mourning keepsake commissioned by a loved one. We think that this might be Maria's hair but it was also common to include a piece of hair from a family member of the deceased. Unlike the intricate work in the brooches we've seen this natural braiding could have been done at home by a loved one who might have taken a snippet of Maria's hair after she died. Today we might find hair work a bit icky but for Victorian women it was a popular pastime along the lines of embroidery, scrapbooking and shell work. The invention of photography in 1839 offered a new way of preserving the memory of a loved one. This is a daguerreotype which is one of the earliest forms of photography and it's a unique image developed on a silver coated copper plate. This is an unusual example it's a double portrait showing an elderly woman alive on one side and dead on the other. The pose in the image on the left of the woman lying in her deathbed is meant to reflect the pose in the image on the right. Daguerreotypes were particularly fragile forms of photography and were often framed behind glass and preserved in cases such as these so they stand the test of time. Post-mortem photography such as this offered a really novel way of preserving a moment in time and keeping the memory of a loved one alive. The Victorian cult of mourning even extended to stationery. What we have here is a collection of mourning cards that would either be sent by the family of the bereaved as memento for the deceased or perhaps sent as a consolation to the family. These two cards are related to the death of Prince Albert in 1861 which plunged Queen Victoria and the whole of society into a deep mourning period. Here we have his photograph surrounded by a shrouded tomb and this one has a small poem dedicated to him. This card made of cheaper paper would have been distributed to the general population who wanted to join in with memorialising the life and death of Queen Victoria. On the back it has her dates of when she was born, married and died and that she reigned for 64 years. On the inside are some fond words about the Queen and her death here is described as a nation's regret. Underneath her death date here said her end was peace and perhaps here in death she is reunited with her beloved Prince Albert. Mourning cards flourished in the Victorian era partly due to the cult of mourning but also aided by the fact that paper objects could be more easily mass-produced. These cards demonstrate the variety of paper techniques employed in mourning cards including embossing where the image is raised, paper cutting that we have here with this gothic arch and colour printing. The cards feature a variety of funereal imagery including sorrowful angels holding palms, broken columns, urns and religious symbols such as crosses. Memorial cards could also be a collectible if they related to a famous person like this one here for Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, ex-emperor of the French. The bereaved would be expected to use specific stationery when corresponding during the period of mourning and we have some examples here. This envelope features the black border that you see on lots of mourning stationery. The thickness of the black lines would be narrower or wider depending on the depth of your grief and your relationship with the deceased and the letter inside will be written with either black or purple ink. If you received one of these in the post you would instantly know that either somebody had died or the person that was writing to you is deep in grieving. This is a pre-printed card for mourning stationery. You can see again the black border and this would be used for the bereaved to send to thank those that had been in touch to send their commiserations. Memorial cards are a tradition that have survived and often at a funeral today you'll be presented with a memento of the deceased that would feature a photograph, some details about their life and maybe even a comforting message. Mourning objects can be personal, portable, ostentatious, sentimental or even a little bit grisly. Is it too much or do you think we should mourn the passing of these poignant and fascinating trappings of grief? Let us know what you think in the comments.