The Victorian era, spanning Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901, was marked by a heightened preoccupation with death, grief, and remembrance. This wasn’t just a cultural undercurrent—it was a full-blown aesthetic. Mourning rituals were rigidly structured, and one of the most intriguing and personal expressions of grief came in the form of mourning jewelry and hair art.
These objects weren’t just sentimental keepsakes. They were wearable symbols of loss, love, and the permanence of memory in the face of death’s finality.
Death, Grief, and Style
Queen Victoria’s extended mourning after the death of Prince Albert in 1861 shaped an entire generation’s approach to grief. She wore black for the remaining 40 years of her life, and her devotion helped popularize mourning as a visual, cultural practice. Clothing, home decor, and personal accessories all followed strict mourning guidelines, and jewelry became a key part of this ritualized grief.
Mourning jewelry wasn’t just about wearing black; it was about carrying a piece of the deceased—literally. These items were made with or inspired by the physical remains of loved ones, most notably their hair. It wasn’t considered macabre. It was intimate, physical proof of connection, an anchor to someone no longer alive.
What Mourning Jewelry Looked Like
Mourning jewelry came in many forms: brooches, lockets, rings, bracelets, pendants, and earrings. The materials and colors used were symbolic. Black was dominant—usually achieved through jet, a fossilized wood, or other black materials like gutta-percha or enamel. Gold was also common, often used to frame or contrast with the black base.
Symbols were essential. Skulls, urns, hourglasses, and weeping willows were reminders of mortality. Inscriptions like “In Memory Of” were often engraved on the back or inside of rings and lockets, usually accompanied by the name and death date of the deceased.
But hair was what gave this jewelry its emotional weight.
Hair Art: More Than a Lock
Hair art during the Victorian era took mourning jewelry to another level. A lock of a loved one’s hair wasn’t just hidden away; it was made into art. Hair was woven, braided, or artistically arranged into intricate designs, often sealed under glass or mounted behind a locket’s frame.
There were two main ways hair was used:
Hidden or preserved locks – A small amount of hair would be placed behind a glass locket or within a ring compartment, often curled or tied with thread.
Woven designs – More elaborate pieces involved weaving the hair into patterns, flowers, or even miniature landscapes. Some were delicate enough to resemble lace. Skilled artisans—and sometimes family members themselves—would craft these by hand.
Hair didn’t decay the way flesh did. It was enduring, organic, and personal. Having a piece of someone’s actual body—transformed into something beautiful—was profoundly meaningful.
Who Wore It?
Mourning jewelry was not limited to women, though they were its primary wearers and preservers. Men might wear mourning rings or cufflinks, but for women, especially those in deep mourning, jewelry was one of the few sanctioned adornments. Even then, it had to follow strict codes—jet jewelry was appropriate for the first stage of mourning, while later stages might allow more elaborate gold and hairwork pieces.
Wealth played a role too. The upper classes could afford custom pieces from skilled jewelers, while the middle and working classes often used hair art kits or ordered affordable mourning rings through catalogs. Mourning jewelry was one of the rare luxury items considered respectable across classes—because it wasn’t about vanity, but devotion.
Sentimental, Not Just Funereal
While mourning jewelry was explicitly tied to death, hair jewelry wasn’t always about loss. Friends exchanged locks of hair as tokens of affection, lovers gifted hair rings, and family members preserved one another’s hair as keepsakes while still alive. This practice blurred the line between mourning and sentimentality.
But during the Victorian age, with high mortality rates and the prevalence of early death, especially among children, hair art took on its most powerful form as mourning expression. It became a quiet, deeply personal form of storytelling—of a life remembered, of grief worn openly.
Why It Faded
By the early 20th century, mourning jewelry and hair art had largely fallen out of fashion. Changing attitudes toward death, new hygienic standards, and the rise of modernism—favoring clean lines and abstraction over symbolism—made such tangible, emotional tokens feel outdated. The industrial revolution also made mass-produced jewelry more accessible, further shifting tastes.
Today, these pieces survive as artifacts, collected in museums or by enthusiasts of Victorian history and material culture. They still hold a certain haunting beauty—strange, intricate, and achingly human.
Final Thoughts
Mourning jewelry and hair art in the Victorian era were more than fashion—they were expressions of grief in a time when death was ever-present. These items bridged the physical and the emotional, allowing people to carry their losses with them, literally. They made mourning visible and tangible, and in doing so, turned memory into something that could be worn against the skin.
It’s easy to dismiss these artifacts as relics of a more sentimental, morbid time. But look closer, and they reveal something timeless: the universal human desire to hold on to the ones we’ve lost, to find beauty in grief, and to carry memory in more than just the mind.
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