AIBU to collect antique items that some people find creepy?

[PicnicAtTheDisco]

I collect antique jewellery from the Georgian and Victorian periods.

I have several mourning brooches - for the uninitiated (and I know there won't be many but just in case!) these are items of memorial jewellery. A section of the deceased loved one's hair is coiled and plaited and housed in the brooch behind a crystal plate usually. The back is engraved with the name, date of death and age of the person.

You can also gets rings etc, same principle.

Anyway, I haven't deliberately sought out my mourning jewellery (kind of inherited these pieces) but I found myself looking at a beautiful mourning ring and just wondered if it's a bit .... morbid?

They're a couple of hundred years old so not in the slightest bit recent

So. Creepy? Or touching and remembering those who've passed?

I'd love it personally. I see it as keeping someone's precious things safe and treasuring their memory.

You should collect anything you like! I’m ‘morbid’ too though. To be honest it’s no different then getting a tattoo with a loved one’s remains or wearing cremains in a locket.

Some of this jewellery is very ornate and collecting these is just like any collectable

I love that kind of jewellery.

Nope, I wouldn't consider it morbid. A lot of pieces are beautiful pieces of jewellery in their own right. It's not like you are collecting body parts in jars of formaldehyde.

it wouldn't be for me having locks of someone else's hair in my home, I'd find it a bit icky, but wouldn't think anything of someone else collecting this kind of thing. are you a Goth? it's the kind of thing I'd imagine a lovely mournful goth collecting.

Victorian death portraits give me the chills though and I would find it odd if someone decorated their home with those. For me they're a whole other level of creepy.

I would love a collection of mourning brooches and lockets. I think them very beautiful and especially those with a photo of the person in the other half of the locket. I would love to see a photo of yours if you would be willing to share.

I think it sounds fascinating and endearing. I wish you would post some pictures of them.

You would only be unreasonable if you attempted to clone these people from their hair samples

Very true. Don't do this.

@Scruffington oh gosh that just made me howl with laughter! I'm about as far removed from a goth as you can get unless Goths are now dressing head to toe in Jigsaw and Scamp & Dude?

If it makes you feel better, they're not that common. There's a bit of a fashion at the moment for identifying any Victorian picture including children - or even not including children - as a death portrait. I've even seen ones where the supposedly 'dead' subject can be identified with certainty, and was known to have gone on to live a full and happy life! I think it's because, of course, you had to sit very still for Victorian portraits. People with a (genuinely) morbid turn of mind start clutching at straws and saying 'ooh, the little girl is being held by her mum, she must be dead!' rather than realising the mum is holding her child to keep her still!

I will take some pics tomorrow and post them! I collect intaglios too but they're not creepy

I watched a programme on the Duchess of Northumberland who collects taxidermy including stuffed rats and dogs. Now that imo is really weird so crack on

I collect things precisely because they’re creepy!

Yes I was on some facebook group where people claimed every photo of a Victorian infant was a death portrait. And you can clearly see the difference between a living child who's being clasped still and one who's deceased. Just makes me sad (and a bit discombobulated) imagining the logistics involved in bringing your recently dead loved one to a photographer's studio to have their portrait taken.

Yes, Scamp and Dude is maybe a teensy bit jazzy for the goths.

It is very sad. But in a culture where you wouldn't have all the photos and mementos we tend to have, it must have been very precious. Rather like the way some bereaved parents are comforted by having foot or hand prints for a stillborn baby.

Same with stands to hold the child still. Not holding up a body!
That said, we have a family post mortem photo (the little girl is lying limp on her mother's lap and we know she had died). Very sad.

I think it's making me feel a bit .. intrusive?

My brain is telling me I have no right to own something that probably belonged to a relative of 'Frances Bennett' who died in 1824

So I keep thinking 'erk, I have someone called Frances' hair in my jewellery box'

But I don't feel that way about my antique letters, intaglios and jewellery

So do I!!!

Cool. I've a skull somewhere.