My fascination with lockets first started with a curly red-haired girl looking out a window at the Hudson Street Home for Girls, fantasising about who her long lost parents might be. Hanging around her neck, one half a heart shaped locket, the only keepsake from her birth parents.
It could be the musical theatre enthusiast in me, but I like to think even at the age of seven I understood the intense sentiment this form of jewellery held. So much so that I asked for my very own gold heart locket for my birthday, a request that saw me proudly receive a 9ct gold locket from my Grandparents, carefully selected from the pages of the Argos catalogue. I still have this locket today, stored in my safe next to arguably much more impressive treasures, but the symbolism it holds outweighs some of my finest diamonds.
Lockets have long been a part of the jewellery vernacular, the word itself deriving from the French loquet meaning latch or door handle. We first see examples of the European style lockets we still manufacture today in the 16th century (although examples of relics and ‘container’ jewellery predate the Romanesque period). However, these ancient examples often held far less romantic items than we are now accustomed, such as the flesh or finger bones of deceased!
At first lockets were an extension of mourning jewellery. Used to commemorate the death of loved ones, mourning jewels were incredibly popular from the 16th – 19th century. Some famous examples include a locket ring commissioned in 1575 for Queen Elizabeth I. The exterior of the ring is a fine inlaid ruby band with a diamond studded ‘E’ to the head, which opens to reveal two tiny miniature portraits, one of Queen Elizabeth I and the other of her famously decapitated mother, Anne Boleyn.
Before 1860 it was more common to see mourning jewellery in rings or bracelets, but after the death of Prince Albert in 1861 these were mainly replaced by lockets after a rather special memorial locket was commissioned by Queen Victoria. The fine banded agate piece centres around an old mined cut diamond star with the enamelled phrase ‘Die reine Seele schwingt sich auf zu Gott’ (the pure soul rises to God) encircling the precious gems, whilst the interior of the locket holds a photograph of Prince Albert next to a lock of his brown hair. A similar style of mourning locket can be seen in our own collection, a fine banded agate piece with a diamond studded letter H, dedicated to deceased explorer Henry Arkwright, who died in 1866. The locket so closely mirrors Queen Victoria’s own, cementing the social importance of the Arkwright family.
But lockets were not just mourning jewels, they were also used to “show allegiance to someone who [was] not present, whether the loss [was] through death or just the general isolation of modern life” (K. Kelleer, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption).
Look no further than Dickens’ Oliver Twist, where the young orphan Oliver is left a locket by his mother containing a lock of her and his father’s hair and you will start to see the pattern emerging with the red-haired Annie. Examples of these treasured love ‘tokens’ between estranged mother and baby can be seen on display in London’s Foundling Museum, established by Thomas Coram in 1739, where “rows upon rows of embroidered scraps of material; engraved lockets [and] in one case the single sleeve of a child’s garment, the other kept by the mother” (Times Magazine) are displayed.
Fast forward to the Great War and we see the role lockets play in morale, often holding the pictures of sweethearts and lovers hundreds of miles away. Lockets became so popular in America during this period that you could often buy them at the post office, ready to be sent to beloved back home or on the front. These desperately affectionate keepsakes showing the emotional power a locket holds.
Today the power and sentimentality of the locket endures, with modern creations still proving popular in jewellery, and I am confident this will remain.
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