Black Ornament Maker
These manufacturers were often found in cities best known for the production of metal wares. In fact the substance was jet, a form of coal, and a fine gemstone. It was especially linked with mourning clothing, which was greatly popularised by the example of Queen Victoria. She wore a necklace of jet through the 1850s and later for Prince Albert from 1861.
However, as a gemstone it was expensive- until ‘Vulcanite’, or Patent Jet, was invented by Aaron Jennens Davenport in 1849. It then reached a far wider market.
Originally associated with Whitby, jet, (and later Vulcanite jewellery), was fashionable even after the decline of mourning dress in the 1890’s. A Kelly’s Directory of 1880 for Birmingham listed 23 black ornament makers, large and small, producing articles such as brooches, belts, ear rings, crosses, beads, bracelets, combs, shawl pins and buttons. Quite a major industry, and although it was later associated with the ‘flappers’ of the 1920s with their waist length necklaces, it was very much a British article and, for many, an extremely meaningful one.
