Victorian Jewelry

Queen Victoria of Great Britain is the inspiration behind Victorian jewelry. Queen Victoria’s great love for her husband and children led to the creation of the romantic, sentimental, and symbolic jewelry designs.

Flowers, birds, bows, crowns, hearts, and serpent motifs were popular jewelry designs during the Victorian era. Generally, jewelers composed these jewelry pieces of many precious and semi-precious gemstones. Favorite gemstones included turquoise, garnets, amethysts, coral, and seed pearls.

Diamond jewelry also became extremely popular during this period. Owing to the sentimentality of the Victorian era, human hair was incorporated into jewelry, a staple of traditional, mourning jewelry.

Interesting pieces of jewelry, ferronieres, were popular during this period. People wore ferronieres, chains or ribbons studded with a jewel in the center, across the forehead. Jewelry was worn in abundance. Women often dressed themselves in multiple bracelets along with bangles, necklaces, rings, earrings and brooches. Religious jewelry also held a special significance during the Victorian period.