Nick Boschetto

Nick Boschetto

Victorian Mourning Warehouses: One-Stop Mourning

Cover and title page of A History of Mourning by Richard Davey, commissioned by Jay’s London Mourning Warehouse to offer rules of etiquette for mourning during the Victorian Age.

by Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher   “MOURNING—Court, Family, and Complimentary—The Proprietors of the London General Mourning Warehouse, Nos. 247 and 249 Regent-street, beg respectfully to remind families whose bereavements compel them to adopt mourning attire, that every article (of the very…

Memorial Flowers: The Oldest Form of Tribute

by Judy Gonyeau, managing editor   The arrangement and placement of flowers around the dead are considered the oldest act of mourning. During the 1951 excavation of the Shandiar Cave in Northern Iraq, Dr. Ralph Solecki discovered several burial sites.…

Mourning Jewelry

Below: Glass/gold/hair mourning brooch, mid-1800s, American, Gift of Miriam W. Coletti, 1993. Public domain, www.metmuseum.org

By Melody Amsel-Arieli   During the Middle Ages, Europeans grieved the passing of loved ones by following a variety of traditional social and religious rituals. Since lives then were marked by disease and high childhood mortality, scores of mourners wore…