The New World

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

2. Made In U.S.A

The trade of the jeweler is perhaps more sensitive than any other to the alternating waves of depression and prosperity. With every war and business panic it suffered then as now. Nevertheless, jewelry shops continued to multiply and find place in the various cities of the United States.

By 1800 or thereabouts, a shop in Providence, Rhode Island, offered a display of ‘Filled Work.’ It was an inexpensive form of jewelry in which a little gold was made to go a long way. The face of the ornament was stamped from a thin strip of gold; its back from another thin strip of inferior quality. The two parts, being put together, formed a hollow shell which was then filled with baser metal. This type of jewelry became popular with the less wealthy.

As for the rich, they still imported most of their fashions and their jewelry from abroad. The Greek influence which during the early eighteen hundreds so greatly shaped the styles of women’s clothes in Europe, crossed the sea and reached America. Our stylish great-great-grandmothers—then girls of the period—outdid the Greeks. They dipped their muslin dresses in water and wrung them out before putting them on, so that the dampened material would cling in classic folds. And for ornament, of course, the classic cameo and intaglio were the appropriate jewels.

By 1830, fashion had flown to the opposite extreme. Full skirts and puffed sleeves made a new silhouette but still the ladies wore their cameos.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century much jewelry had been made with an eye to its emotional appeal—a tendency which lasted well into the nineteenth century. It was an era of romanticism and sentimentalism that held sway over the ways and manners of society and was reflected in the current jewelry. Posy rings with their inscribed doggerels were still going strong. But possibly even more highly favored than the cheerful posy ring was the dismal jewelry of grief. It typified in such convenient form the genteel sentiments of piety and sadness. Sentimental melancholy for its own sake stood as the hallmark of gentility and refinements. You could even assume the virtue if you had it not by wearing mourning jewelry. Youth might upon occasion afford to be gay, but the ‘heart bowed down by weight of woe’ was a characteristic note in popular music and fiction, and seems to have held more glamor than it does today.

At this time came the full flowering of that remarkable development known as ‘hair work’. Rings, lockets, brooches, bracelets, watchchains, scarfpins—almost any form of jewelry was likely to include human hair most ingeniously introduced one way or another into its design. Sometimes the hair was that of a living person, but more often that of some dear departed.

A lock of hair under crystal might be mounted in a ring, brooch, or locket. That was the most obvious and simple method of use. But it took skill and craftsmanship to create one of those amazing Allegories of Grief so profoundly esteemed by our great-great-grandparents. It was a curious attitudinizing of sentiment which impelled the gently bred to incite and stimulate their emotions in ways which we of today cannot but see as tragi-comic.

The standardized allegory, with slight variations of design, depicts a weeping female drooping, all disconsolate, over a large tomb; or perhaps she languishes amid a number of funeral urns. A weeping willow tree emphasizes the downward sweep of all-consuming depression. Done in the larger sizes this admired design lents its note of cheer to the living room wall, while in miniature size with setting of gold, jet or seed pearl, in ring, brooch or locket it graced the person of the bereaved.

The New World (continued)