Jewelry for mourning, love, and fancy, 1770-1830

Magazine Antiques, April, 1999 by Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch

Rings, bracelets, lockets, and brooches set with ivories painted with motifs expressing mourning, love, or fancy became very fashionable in America in the 1770s.(1) Often embellished with hair and ciphers, this type of jewelry remained popular until the 1830s.(2) Women often chose to have their likenesses painted wearing it (see Pls. I, III), most often ivories memorializing family members, but occasionally commemorating national figures such as George Washington even decades after his death (see Pl. IV). Although the design elements for this jewelry were standardized(5) and documented in pattern books, individual put a great deal of thought into selecting the components to be included, each of which had a very specific meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, they determined the exact devices, mottoes, and ciphers to be incorporated and how the hair of a loved one would be used in these very personal forms of adornment.

The use of hair in jewelry was almost like a relic - a way of keeping a dear one around. In 1770 James Rivington advertised in the New-York Journal; or, the General Advertiser that he could provide as "New-Years Presents...Lockets for the custody of the dear creature's hair...with mottoes."(4) In 1833 a South Carolinian wrote that a

jet pin in the form of a heart containing a lock of his precious hair, which I have so often delighted to comb and brush, is all what remains to me of my darling child. I keep it in my trunk, but it is too sacred ever to be exhibited to public gaze.(5)

However, it should not be assumed that the hair in every piece of jewelry was that of the individual cited. On May 27, 1784, Thomas Randall advertised in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Packet, and General Advertiser that he had "a neat assortment of jewellery...by the last ships from London - a variety of rings set in hair with different mottos." No doubt, he would have personalized these imported pieces for his customers. And it is not clear what alternative John Roberts might have been referring to when he advertised in June 1798 that he executed "real HAIR DEVICES for...an infinite variety of Mourning, Love, and Fancy pieces."(6)

Advertisements for jewelry with devices, mottoes, and ciphers, especially pieces incorporating hair, began to proliferate in this country starting in the 1770s. In Charleston, John and Hamilton Stevenson offered "Designs of every Kind executed in Hair, and in Hair and Colours, a manner never before attempted: also Sewing with Hair upon Silk for Bracelets, etc. A Method which preserves the Hair and Work to the latest Ages."(7) In New York City, Bennett and Dixon advertised "Mourning rings, plain or set, with any kind of stone with hair work'd in landskips, sprigs, plates or any device required."(8) In Philadelphia, Robert Fulton (1765-1815) described himself as a "Miniature Painter & Hair Worker,"(9) and a Mr. Soissons claimed to make "every kind of device in HAIR, such as Flowers, cyphers, allegorical representations, platted-work, &c."(10) It is clear from many of these advertisements that the hair was not always woven, plaited, twisted, or used in locks, where it was quite obviously hair, but it was also ground and mixed with paint to create the designs on the ivory.(11) In many mourning compositions, for instance, it gave texture to the turf on which the tomb stands. Francis Rabineau (w. 1791-1797) in New Bern, North Carolina, advertised that "he paints in Miniature, Crayon and Hair Work, with natural or dissolved hair: mourning pieces for Bracelets, Brestpins, or Rings, figurative to the wish and desire of the ladies and gentlemen."(12) And a visitor to Benjamin Dart Roper's mansion in Charleston in 1818 described

a family piece, a funeral monument [about 8 by 6 inches] done in England by an...artist with the hairs of his late parents, brothers, wife, twelve children, & his own....The ground work is constituted of shrubbery of his father's and mother's hair, dare An urn on a monument...is shrouded with trees of erect figure & horizontal limbs & thick foliage of his brothers' and sisters' hair. Ten lambs...& two female figures...occupy a field...of his children's hair of various colors, mostly of infantile flaxen. A cot represents his lamented wife, constituted of her hair, shaded by weeping willows & embraced by a fence of his own hair. The hairs chopped fine & mixed, I presume, with oil & perhaps colourless paint. I hope my dear daughters will find in these hints materials for a family piece of our own.(13)

Sometimes individuals stipulated in their wills how they wanted their hair to be used. Hannah Washington (1776-1802) must have had a very full head of hair when she drew up her will in 1800, in which she beseeched her

dear brother...give to my worthy friend Mrs. Hetty Broadwater...a neat plain mourning ring of my hair...it is my desire that my dear Sister Anne Lee has a Clasp made of my hair for her Neck...I give to my dear sister Sarah Lee...a Clasp for a Collar of my hair - I leave to my dear Niece Elenor Lee a ring made of my hair. My good friend Mrs. Fendall a ring made of my hair which I hope she will always wear - to my worthy and much Esteemed friend Mr. Edmund J. Lee a Handkerchief pin of my hair, to my dearly beloved Thomas Lee, I desire the same remembrance too as a token of the love [of] his unfortunate sister...I desire that my dear sons should as they grow old enough to take care of them may have each of them a shirt pin made of their fathers and my hair which I desire that they may wear as long as they live, the girls I wish to have, a Clasp for the neck made of the same hair, the Motto to be if you Value the injunction of a dying parent, have your God always in View.(14)