CC BY 4.0, The post When grief was gem-set: the eerie Victorian brooches made of hair, teeth, and tears appeared first on Boing Boing.

As a result, 'mourning portraits' became a popular custom amongst 19th century society. A mother and daughter are pictured left in mourning dress in the Ballarat area of Victoria, Australia in a ...

Victorian life was suffused with death. Epidemics such as diphtheria, typhus and cholera scarred the country, and from 1861 the bereaved Queen made mourning fashionable.

Victorian Mourning Jewelry, containing a lock of hair from the deceased Source: Thayne Tuason [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons There were rules of what men and women should wear in each ...

Portraits and paintings on the walls also were draped in black cloth. Mourning, for the Victorians, was not something to rush through so the survivors could get on with their lives.

Editor’s note: It’s important to note that the mourning traditions discussed in this story are reminiscent of one family’s personal experiences during the Victorian era in Tennessee.

Source: Carl Rudolph Sohn (1845-1908) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons The Victorian society of the late 1800s was obsessed with death. Queen Victoria set the tone for this after the death ...