Georgian Era Gilt Portrait Miniature and Hair of Girl Mother's Keepsake Pendant - Repousse Design - 1830s Child and Mother Love Hair Jewelry

This listing is for the Antique Georgian Era Portrait Miniature and Lock of Hair Mothers Love Pendant. Likely dates to the early 19th century, between 1820s and 1830s, during the later Georgian period. The pendant has a hand painted watercolor portrait miniature of a young girl on one side and a lock of her hair encased on the other side, both set behind a thick piece of glass or crystal. The portrait and hair are set inside of an ornamented gilded gold metal that is designed using the repousse practice of hand-hammering an ornamented design onto a piece of jewelry. The pendant is in excellent condition with minor tarnishing or fading on the gilded metal but still remains perfectly intact after over 200 years! Perfect historic artifact from the beautiful and romantic Georgian period!

This piece was likely commissioned by the mother of the girl in the portrait as a sentimental keepsake of her child's youth, which was a very popular use of portrait and hair jewelry of children during the Georgian period. It is possible that this pendant was instead a piece of mourning jewelry, which was also a popular use of hair and portraiture jewelry during the 19th century, but mourning pieces commonly included more symbols of death and mourning, such as skeletons or black/darker coloring, which this piece does not include, meaning that it was more likely a piece of love keepsake jewelry.

Human hair was incorporated into jewelry as a keepsake of loved ones, dead or alive, as early as the 17th century. The practice grew in popularity in the Georgian period, with miniature portrait pieces being commissioned to include a lock of a loved one's hair to remember them. Hair jewelry would be worn either as a keepsake of an alive loved one, such as a child, parent, or lover, or as a memento mori (remember death) to remember a loved one who had died. These pieces would either be made of pure gold, or the cheaper gilt gold option depending on the commissioner's wealth and status. Portrait miniatures included in these pieces throughout the Georgian period were hand painted in varying detail, most commonly using watercolor. Once photography was introduced to the public beginning in the 1840s, the majority portraits included in mourning or keepsake jewelry were taken using photographs. Keepsake or courting jewelry that included a lock of hair from a loved one is mentioned in the Regency era classic romance novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, with the quote, "I am sure they will be married soon, for he has got a lock of her hair." This practice of wearing keepsake jewelry was heavily influenced by the rise of the Romanticism movement in art and culture at the turn of the 19th century, which spanned well into the Victorian period. 

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Georgian Era Gilt Portrait Miniature and Hair of Girl Mother's Keepsake Pendant - Repousse Design - 1830s Child and Mother Love Hair Jewelry