Posted 5 years ago
Bettyb00
(197 items)
Hello to all CW , Here are a few of my Victorian mourning pieces I hope you like them!
The fingers of the hand are symbolic each finger has a spiritual meaning, the tip of the middle finger represemts heaven and the hope of eternal life in heaven the thumb represents salvation .
Hands were very symbolic in Victorian times and held different meanings according to how they were posed . I think it is made from bog oak ? I'm not sure.
The rolled gold hair fob is in the shape of an eye this was origionally on a mourning hair necklace now I wear it as a charm on my Victorian bracelet my great great grandmother is pictured in the locket.
PS. Forgot to mention the hand has a sterling silver band/cap
Like you I am a collector of Victorian pieces.
These are exceptional. Since Black was big in the 1800s.Jewelers used many different substances to create pieces and often they're hard to distinguish. There is
Bog oak, French jet, Gutta Percha, Jet, Vulcanite, Onyx to name a few.
Bog oak is wood (actual oak, fir, pine or yew) that has been fossilized in peat marshes or bogs so that it turns hard and black or very dark brown in color. It's also lightweight and warm to the touch, and usually has a matte finish. If u can detect mold lines, with the eye or a loupe it’s usually Gutta Percha since it’s molded rather than carved.
You own beautiful examples of this time period.
Thank you anile2010!
Lovely collection. Mourning jewellery is quite a specialised field, there's an excellent website called Art of Mourning which has lots of information on it. A few things though, jet was not alway worn in morning, it was generally very popular. The locket with your great great grandmother's picture may not be a morning piece, she looks very young, possibly too young to have had a family (although who knows how young was too young back then). If it was a mourning piece, it would have been worn by a member of her family at the time of her death. Also, I don't think your hand is bog oak, when you nick bog oak, its the same colour all the way through. your little hand looks like it's nicked and you can see a pale wood underneath. Maybe its a painted or stained finish. Bog oak was not generally worn as morning jewellery. It was often used for tourist jewellery and you see it carved with harps & shamrocks and sometimes places of interest (in the same way you sometimes see jet brooches of Whitby Abby or the cross in the Whitby Abby cemetery - these are tourist pieces). I used to be crazy for jet, I still have some of my best pieces of jet & bog oak.
This is also a great page - http://www.morninggloryantiques.com/collectVictBog.htm
Thank you very much I appreciate your post I found it very interesting:)