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New York Times
Jewelry commemorating dead loved ones often ends up tucked into boxes of family documents rather than kept accessible with baubles more frequently worn. So the evidence of lives mourned gets filed away, sometimes forgotten for decades. The Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston has received gold tokens inscribed with laments, mixed with paperwork donated since the institution was founded in 1791.... Sarah Nehama, a jewelry maker in Boston, is the show’s major private lender and wrote the catalog (from the University of Virginia Press). She has acquired about 175 mourning pieces in the past eight years, paying prices into the four figures. She has delved into the genealogy of the deceased and their mourners, identifying cousins of Benjamin Franklin and assorted British aristocrats.
Overview
In Death Lamented: The Tradition of Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry illustrates and explains prime examples of rings, bracelets, brooches, and other pieces of mourning jewelry from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Like the exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society, this volume showcases the materials in the Society’s collection and that of Sarah Nehama, a jeweler and private collector who co-curated the event at the MHS. These elegant and evocative objects are presented in context, ...