A mourning ring from the mid-1800s made of 10 karat gold and plaited human hair. $290 at Erie Basin.On the prowl recently for an Art Deco ring, I found myself at Erie Basin, a shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that sells surprisingly affordable antique jewelry. Their Deco diamonds were nice — they looked like they were mined from the top of the Chrysler Building — but what really grabbed me was a very old, and very peculiar, signet ring in rose gold. Its band was filled with hundreds of braided threads the color of raw umber. “Silk?” I hazarded. “Actually,” explained Russell Whitmore, the shop’s owner, “that’s hair.”
As it turned out, the mourning ring I held dated to the mid-19th century and, as was customary at the time, contained the finely plaited follicles of a dearly departed soul. More specifically, this hair was taken from M.H., whose initials were engraved on the signet.
The Red Hook store typically has a few mourning rings in stock on any given week. These two, both from the 1810s, were recently purchased. Who was M.H.? Judging by its size and style, Whitmore said, the ring was probably worn by a man, meaning the initials M.H. most likely referred to that man’s dead wife. (We can only guess about her first name; according to the 1850 United States Census, Mary was then the single most popular female name, but Martha and Margaret were also among the Top 5.) Whitmore, an art school graduate who has become something of an authority on antique jewelry since opening Erie Basin four years ago, found this ring at an estate sale in rural Pennsylvania. He surmised that it was American-made and that, owing to its modest 10-karat gold, was owned by a man who had some means, but was not rich.
Such ghoulish mementos may have been de rigueur in the Victorian era, with its stylized death-obsession, but buying one today is not for everyone. “I’ve actually sold some as wedding rings,” Whitmore said. “But those people were sort of goth, actually.” Whitmore admitted that despite all the interest his mourning rings inspire, their ghostly provenance keeps many people from actually buying them. “It takes the right sort of person,” he said, recalling a seemingly well-adjusted 12-year-old Brooklyn girl who proudly wears a gold Victorian mourning ring that her parents purchased for her at Erie Basin. She finds it moving, not creepy, that the ring is all that remains of a 20-year-old man who died in 1833.
Erie Basin, 388 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, (718) 554-6147. Go to eriebasin.com
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