On Victorian mourning jewellery and the objects we wear to remember
The heart-shaped locket entered popular jewellery around the 1840s, roughly the same decade that Queen Victoria began her long public mourning for Prince Albert. The two facts are not unrelated. Victoria wore black for forty years and made grief fashionable — or at least permissible — in a society that had previously preferred to keep death at a polite distance. The locket became one of the era's most intimate objects: a small hinged case, worn against the chest, containing a photograph, a lock of hair, or sometimes both.
What makes the locket interesting as a design object is its deliberate smallness. It is not a portrait hung on a wall. It is not a monument. It is something you carry with you, hidden under clothing, touching skin. The heart shape is sentimental, obviously, but the mechanism is private. You have to open it to see what is inside. The outside is for the world. The inside is for you.
The red heart on the Red Heart Locket Tee comes from a Victorian jeweller's trade catalogue — the kind of engraving that was never intended as art. It was a sales tool, drawn to show a customer what they might order. The gold starburst at the centre is a common motif in mid-century locket design, meant to catch light and suggest radiance. We liked that it was drawn for commerce but ended up being beautiful anyway.
From the Collection
Red Heart Locket Tee
The print described in this entry is available as a garment, made on demand through Printify.
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