Victorian Fashion: Black Jet

Hello. I hope that you had a great weekend!

During my recent curiousity about Victorian mourning fashions, I came across black jet, which was popular from the mid 1850's to the early 1900's. Jet is considered to be a minor gemstone and is a geological material derived from decaying wood under extreme pressure. Since black jewelry was worn during times of mourning, you will see it often in cabinet card photos of ladies wearing mourning clothes. And, not only was it used in jewelry, but it was also made into buttons, beads, and sequins. If you would like to find out more about it, you can read about the differences between jet, French jet, and onyx here.

I did find a few jet items to use in some future art projects, and thought they were very pretty.

I bought 30 of these for for a very reasonable price from Etsy.

I agree with the seller in that we are not sure what they are.

They are made of small wooden bases with a wrapping 

of black jet seed beads and added thread loops at the top.

She thought that perhaps they were used as loop closure buttons

on clothing or accessories,

or added as design to lamps, or perhaps shawls.

You can see the little loop...

Here are some small buttons with jet beads set

into them.

You can see that jet is not overly shiny,

but does pick up some light

(especially when the photographer doesn't know

how to control light! Ha!)...

OK.

My word of the year is LEARN.

I feel smarter already!

Have you learned about anything new so far this year?