A Family Heirloom - Mourning Pin.
Hair art broche in memory of Lijsbeth Douwes Beintema. This tiny pin, it is only about one centimetre across, contains the hair, or so I was told, of my great-great-grandmother Lijsbeth Douwes Beintema. My grandmother gave me this on my 30th birthday, when I happened to be living in Amsterdam for a little while and so it was an opportunity to pass on a valuable heirloom like this one. I remarked that it looked like a pen and ink sketch, but my grandmother said, no, it is made from her hair. It is a tiny pin and I wonder if it wasn't originally the clasp of a bracelet, because when you turn it over you can see at one end an opening for the other end to hook into. It also looks a bit cobbled together on the back. It shows a scene of a stone urn, mounted on a pedestal with the initials LDB, with some trees and shrubs around it. A sombre cemetery scene like this was typical of the Victorian era hair art that flourished in the nineteenth century and was created to honour the m...
