Sentimental Jewellery

Sentimental Jewellery refers to jewellery designed to express personal feelings, relationships, memories or emotional attachment. It was particularly popular during the Georgian and Victorian periods, when jewellery could carry meanings that were understood by the wearer and recipient.

Sentimental jewellery can incorporate a wide range of symbols and motifs. Hearts could represent love, forget-me-nots remembrance, clasped hands friendship or affection, and serpents eternal love. Lockets could contain miniature portraits, photographs, hair or other personal mementoes.

Other forms of sentimental jewellery include acrostic jewellery, where gemstones spell a hidden message, and jewels incorporating initials, inscriptions or personal symbols. Such pieces were often exchanged between lovers, family members and close friends.

Sentimental jewellery overlaps with mourning and memorial jewellery, but the terms are not interchangeable. Sentimental jewellery is a broader category encompassing jewels expressing affection, remembrance and personal relationships, while mourning jewellery specifically relates to mourning and remembrance following a death.

At Weldons, sentimental jewellery is valued for the combination of craftsmanship, symbolism and personal history that gives individual pieces their distinctive character.

Periods: Particularly Georgian and Victorian
Typical features: Hearts, flowers, serpents, initials, inscriptions, lockets and symbolic gemstones
Purpose: Expressing love, affection, remembrance or personal sentiment