Mid-Victorian — The Grand Period of Mourning and Archaeological Revival
Mid-Victorian — The Grand Period of Mourning and Archaeological Revival
British jewellery 1861–1880, between Prince Albert's death and the Aesthetic Movement
The Mid-Victorian period of jewellery design spans approximately 1861 to 1880, the second of the three conventional divisions of Queen Victoria's long reign. The period is bracketed at its start by the death of Prince Albert in December 1861, which plunged the Queen into a long widowhood that defined court fashion for two decades, and at its end by the rise of the Aesthetic Movement that would dominate the late-Victorian years. The period is sometimes called the Grand Period for the scale and ambition of its work, and is the era in which two of the most distinctive Victorian sub-styles — mourning jewellery and archaeological revival — reached their fullest development.
Mourning jewellery
The Queen's public mourning set the tone for the period's most distinctive output. Black became the dominant ornamental colour, executed in jet (fossilised wood from the Whitby cliffs of North Yorkshire), polished black onyx, vulcanite (hardened rubber, an early industrial polymer), French jet (black glass), and black enamel over gold. Whitby jet became an industry in its own right, with hundreds of workshops in the town producing rings, brooches, beads, and elaborate carved pieces; the trade peaked in the 1870s before declining as the fashion ran its course.
Memorial jewellery — pieces incorporating the hair, photograph, or initials of a deceased person — was produced in vast quantities. Lockets opened to reveal woven hair work or daguerreotype portraits; brooches enclosed plaited hair under glass; rings carried inscriptions and dates. The conventions of public bereavement, and the social calendar of full and half-mourning that governed dress and accessories for two years after a death, supported a substantial commercial trade in these pieces throughout the period.
Archaeological revival
Running alongside the mourning trade was a parallel fascination with the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean. The excavations of Pompeii had been ongoing through the nineteenth century; Heinrich Schliemann's work at Troy in the 1870s captured public imagination; Etruscan tombs at Cerveteri and Vulci yielded gold work whose granulation technique had been lost since antiquity. The Roman jeweller Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794–1865) and his sons Alessandro and Augusto rediscovered and revived Etruscan granulation technique through careful study of unearthed pieces, producing work in their Rome and London workshops that became the template for archaeological-revival jewellery across Europe and Britain.
Carlo Giuliano (c. 1831–1895), Italian-born and London-based, produced some of the period's finest revival work in collaboration with the major British retailers. The Castellani and Giuliano firms produced gold work with granulation, fine wirework, bold geometric forms, and inset gems following classical models. The taste extended to Egyptian motifs after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and to Assyrian and Greek subjects.
Stones and metals
Cabochon garnets, particularly Bohemian pyrope, were ubiquitous in cluster brooches and bracelets. Coral — both Mediterranean angel-skin pink and Italian sang-de-boeuf red — saw heavy use, often in carved cameo form. Seed pearls were assembled into vast naturalistic bouquets by skilled stringers. Diamond came back into favour later in the period as Cape diamonds began arriving from the new South African mines after 1867; opal made a tentative return after a long Romantic-era superstition against it had restricted use; turquoise and the so-called pavé work in small cabochon turquoise was a Mid-Victorian staple.
Gold ranged from 9-carat through 18-carat, with much of the trade work in 15-carat or 9-carat to keep prices accessible. Pinchbeck and rolled gold imitations served the lower end. Silver, after a long absence from fine jewellery, returned in the 1870s as Aesthetic taste began to assert itself.
Forms and types
The brooch was the dominant piece of the period, worn at the throat, on the bodice, or at the shoulder. Pendant earrings reached substantial size; lockets were universal; the bangle in gold or silver replaced earlier chain bracelets. Long guard chains carried watches, fans, and lorgnettes; the chatelaine, with its suspended household tools, was both a domestic instrument and a piece of personal display.
Collecting and the market
Mid-Victorian work survives in considerable quantity but is unevenly distributed by quality. Excellent Castellani and Giuliano pieces command serious prices at auction; routine commercial mourning jewellery and seed-pearl assemblages are widely available at modest cost. Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Wartski archive, and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore document the period's stylistic range and technical depth.