The Jeweller's Book
Here is a pattern book, published in 1864, containing a collection of drawings and designs for hair jewelry. Within the excerpted pages, we can see a solid example of period mourning (and not!) hair rings and bracelets. Again, modern readers may find this morbid, but I want to highlight the idea that a physical commodity and luxury item can be infused with the personhood of the dead. Here, I argue, the dead have become completely objectified--something to be worn and displayed publically on the living bodies of those that survive them. Like the insistence of a healthy outward appearance in the first chapter, Victorians also want to publically display those they love and mourn with a nod to acceptable fashion.