Existing comment:
Brooch, ca 1860
The use of the color black to represent mourning was de riguer among the American middle class and mercantile elite. Late 19th-century mourning jewelry included a multitude of pins, brooches, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and sleeve buttons made in black enamel, onyx, chalcedony, and jet. Sometimes black jewelry incorporated hair, but it was no longer essential to represent mourning.
The diamonds, pearls, and gold worked into these jewelry items indicate that they were created for affluent mourners. As Harper's Weekly noted in 1873, mourning goods could be terrifyingly (or dangerously) expensive for some Americans.
"The compulsory wearing of black among Christian nations may be a small matter to the rich when one of their family departs to a better world; to the poor it is a serious business, and adds a new terror to the death... the terror of an expenditure which they cannot afford without depriving the living of that which is necessary to their life, crippling their resources for many months, or... years."
-- "Why Black?", Harper's Weekly, October 25, 1873 |