Do you have some of your ancestors’ jewellery tucked away in a drawer or jewellery box? Or perhaps you have photographs of your ancestors wearing brooches, bracelets and pendants. While you might consider them just pretty pieces of adornment, for the Victorians, the symbols, stones and images used in jewellery all had specific meanings. Mourning jewellery, love tokens and sentimental jewellery contained coded messages that were understood by both giver and receiver.

Mourning jewellery
In the Victorian period, mourning was a way to honour and remember the dead, and a number of elaborate rituals and conventions laid out the correct way to observe mourning. Many of these rules related to mourners’ dress and the jewellery they were permitted to wear while grieving: during the first stage of mourning, clothes and jewellery were to be black, preferably matte, absorbing the light.

Jet, with its profound black hue, was considered appropriate for the first few months of deep mourning. It was carved into intricate designs: women weeping over urns; crosses, which represented faith; and anchors, which symbolised strength. Once the initial mourning period was over, gemstones could be worn, as long as they weren’t coloured: bright stones such as emeralds, sapphires and rubies were considered too frivolous for grief. Opals and pearls were favoured instead as they represented tears. Often a lock of the deceased’s hair was plaited and placed in the centre of a brooch, surrounded by pearls or opals, or it might be secured inside a locket or in a compartment at the back of a ring.

Black enamel was popular for mourning jewellery, though white enamel was sometimes used if the deceased was young or unmarried. Enamel jewellery was often decorated with images: lily of the valley represented happiness in the hereafter; a broken column indicated a life cut short; and acorns meant the end of a long life. Convolvulus indicated eternal sleep; weeping willows symbolised mourning; and harebells meant grief.

A widow might wear a brooch in the shape of a single hand holding flowers or a wreath, in memory of her husband, and showing the loss of his hand in hers. Significance was encoded not only in the design of the jewellery itself, but also in how it was worn. Victorian ladies normally wore several bracelets at the same time: during mourning, they typically only wore one – either in black enamel or made of hair – to emphasise the fact they were mourning.

Mourning jewellery is often inscribed with the name and dates of the deceased, so if you have a family piece, examine it for inscriptions that might well fill a gap in your family history research.

Love tokens
For much of the Victorian period, giving love tokens in the form of jewellery was the preserve of the rich. Wealthy lovers might give jewellery that spelt out their sentiments with gemstones, using the initial letter of each stone to form a word. A ‘regards’ ring contains ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby, diamond, and sapphire. A bracelet saying ‘dearest’ is made up of a diamond, emerald, amethyst, ruby, emerald, sapphire and tourmaline or topaz.

A number of events towards the end of the 19th century made love tokens affordable by the working classes. First, the development of industrial processes made the mass manufacture of cheap jewellery possible. Secondly, wearing mourning jewellery fell out of fashion and people favoured simpler, sentimental pieces. When the duty on silver was abolished in 1890, even the lowliest factory boy could afford to give his sweetheart a silver love brooch that expressed his feelings for her.

There was a huge variety of designs in these silver brooches. Many spelled out the recipient’s name: Alice, Norah, Sarah. Others were decorated with flowers, each of which had its own particular meaning. In 1856, a dictionary of flowers gave the meanings of more than 700 flowers. Ivy represented married fidelity; forget-me-nots meant true love; and four-leaved clover meant ‘be mine’. A carnation symbolised devotion; white clover meant ‘think of me’; and a cornflower meant refinement.

There were a number of common symbols used on love tokens: a pair of love birds, often clutching a sprig of flowers in their beaks; clasped hands symbolising love and affection; and horseshoes, though often inverted, were for good fortune. A popular design was the entwined lovers’ knot, indicating unbreakable bonds of love and fidelity. Sometimes this is shown as a fastened buckle.

A shy suitor – as long as he could look up the ‘language of flowers’ – could use the design on a love brooch to express his feelings minutely. From the bewildered lover using the flower love-in-a-mist to say ‘you puzzle me’ to the devoted suitor using phlox to express the sentiment ‘our souls are entwined’, every shade and mood of a romantic relationship could be expressed without the suitors fumbling for words.

If lovers were to be parted for a length of time, they might exchange tokens of twin hearts bearing the word ‘Mizpah’. These tokens are usually inscribed with the message ‘The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another’. Mizpah originally meant a watchtower, but came to mean an emotional bond between people who were parted, either through death or distance.

Some symbols were found on both mourning jewellery and love tokens. Anchors meant ‘hope’ on love tokens, but in mourning they symbolised strength in faith. The appearance of an anchor didn’t necessarily mean that the deceased (or loved one) was a sailor. Hearts were often found in mourning jewellery, as well as on love tokens. When depicted on love tokens, they were often presented as two linked hearts, adorned with flowers. A heart with a crown means ‘queen of my heart’. The symbol of a serpent again is found both in mourning and in love jewellery: representing eternity, a snake biting its own tail became fashionable after Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria such a ring on their engagement. It symbolised eternal love. When depicted as part of mourning, the serpent represents eternity in the afterlife.

Sentimental jewellery
The Victorian period saw a rise in sentimentality about childhood, friendship and family life. These themes were reflected in prints and advertisements of the time, and were also represented in cheap, mass-produced jewellery, the most popular of which was the silver brooch. Friends and family members exchanged silver brooches to express their affection for each other. It could be as simple as a name brooch given as a birthday present, or a bar brooch that simply said ‘Mother’. Brooches saying ‘Baby’ were given to mark the birth of a new sibling.

Friends exchanged brooches displaying joined hands symbolising friendship, love and peace. Coral was often used for this sort of brooch as it represented warmth and love. A combination of cross, anchor and heart, representing faith, hope and charity, was also a popular choice for gifts between friends and family.

Victorian jewellery contains a number of symbols that were understood by all. Though much of this symbolism is no longer current in our culture, we can still decode our ancestors’ jewellery which we’ve inherited or is visible on photographs. From the broken column on a mourning brooch indicating an early death, to the mizpah gifted between parted lovers, we can pick up clues that can help us develop our family history, understand more clearly the everyday emotional lives of our ancestors, and use inscriptions to fill in gaps in our family tree.