Description:
One of a pair of matching, rectangular mouring pins or brooches with a scrolled gold border with a stylized shell in each corner, around a band of black enamel, around a narrow oval, gold foliate band that borders a glass oval that covers a lock of hair (see also 89.084). They descended in the Hubbard family of Sunderland, Massachusetts, and reflect a modest and ubiquitous form of jewelry available in the early-mid 19th century. These kinds of brooches, worn at teh center of a collar or perhaps down more on the center of the chest of a dress, exhibit some wear and tear from use. They are examples of affordable pieces of mourning jewelry that would have been part of a local jeweler's regular stock. The customer would have contributed hair (of themselves or a loved one), which would have been worked in the jewelry by either the jeweler or in tandem with a specialized hair worker. The lock of hair in both brooches appears to be from the same person. The presence of two pins does not suggest they were worn as a pair; multiple, similar pins may have been commissioned and given away. The pins, which are not inscribed, exhibit multiple repairs. They were a gift the museum from Parker Dole Hubbard (1919-1994), son of George Caleb Hubbard (b.1878) and Florence Graves Hubbard, grandson of Parker Dole Hubbard (1825-1895) and Elizabeth Newton Hubbard (1842-1915), great-grandson of Ashley Hubbard and Betsey Dole Hubbard (1794-1862), and great-great grandson of Caleb Hubbard (1754-1850) and Lucretia Ashley Hubbard (1767-1853) of the Plumtrees section of Sunderland, Mass. A similar brooch is worn by Betsey Dole Hubbard in her later portrait by Erastus Salisbury Field (c.1850) in Historic Deerfield's collection.
Tags:
mourning Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+89.085 |
