Tales from the Family Jewelry Box, Part 1

Recently, I was searching on eBay for Victorian mourning jewelry.  You know the fancies that take you from time to time?  I had an intense craving to own a mourning brooch, and I decided to see what both fit my budget and appealed to me aesthetically.  Although I'm fascinated by Victorian hair jewelry, I'm also a bit horrified by it, so that was out.  I would have loved a piece of carved jet, especially proper Whitby jet, and I did earmark a few pieces on my watchlist.  But they were either a bit too small for my purposes, or considerably too pricey, or the bidding history suggested someone else might have lost their heart to the piece.  In the end, I chose this, which I absolutely adore.  I'm sure the leaf is symbolic of something, especially as I saw several brooches with a similar design.  New life in the face of death?  Falling autumn leaves?  While most of my antique and vintage jewelry is family pieces, I'm happy to have this one among them.

One thing that struck me, as I looked through the listings, was all of the pins with photographs in them which were labelled as mourning jewelry.  That may have been the case with some of the pieces, but I have two examples in my own collection which I happen to know were "proud parents" pieces, worn by two of my great grandmothers, from the last decade of the 19th century and the first one of the 20th.

The one on the left belonged to one of my great-grandmothers on my father's side. The two children are my great-uncle Harry and my great-aunt Elizabeth -- this picture must have been taken before my grandfather (Fred), the youngest, was born. My great-aunt was born in 1893, and as she lived to be 103, I was lucky enough to get to know her well. The one on the right is my Nana, my maternal grandmother, who's solo because she was an only child. I absolutely love her masses of curly hair and the off-the-shoulder dress. I have a copy of the full-length photograph this was cropped down from, and she's wearing adorable high-button shoes, as well. Nana (Marion) was born in 1905, and she's pretty young here, so I'd guess this is pre-1910.

They're midway between 18th and early 19th century jewelry with painted miniature portraits, on the one hand, and modern jewelry with children's names or birthstones, on the other. More public than a locket, less fancy than a cameo, from a time when photography was still an event rather than an everyday occurrence, they speak of parental pride in an absolutely delightful way.

Do you have old family photo jewelry? What stories does your jewelry box tell? I'd love to hear!

This post originally appeared on the Prairie Rose Publications blog on September 21, 2020.