The Centuries Of Symbolism Wrapped Up In Royal Mourners’ Pearls (2024)

It was not until the reign of Queen Victoria, however, that pearls became so strongly associated with mourning. She was only 42 when she lost her beloved husband, Prince Albert, in 1861 and spent the rest of her life – almost 40 years – in mourning. Thanks to her, strict rules developed around the rites of mourning. As Clare Phillips, jewellery curator at the Victorian and Albert Museum, wrote in her book Jewels and Jewellery:

“The etiquette surrounding death became more complex and rigid in the course of the [19th] century... By the 1860s a widow was expected to dress in black for a year and a day after her husband’s death, wearing minimal black matte ornaments, usually of unpolished jet. Gradually she was allowed more elaborate mourning jewellery, then diamonds and pearls, and finally a return to coloured stones. Some widows, following the example of Queen Victoria, never returned to more light-hearted pieces.”

Such rules are no longer strictly observed of course. Few people wear jet jewels for mourning today, and the trade in ivory – another colourless material popular in 19th century mourning dress – is banned. Pearls however, with their soft, subtle polish and their association with purity, are still considered an appropriate choice — even better now that, thanks to Kokichi Mikimoto’s development of the cultured pearl industry in the early 20th century, the gem is much more widely accessible.