There are many things I admire about the Victorians. But particularly their complete and utter refusal to be normal about anything. Love wasn’t just love, it was ETERNAL DEVOTION. Heartbreak wasn’t something to discuss over wine with your friends. It required mourning jewellery, hidden messages and preferably a tiny object you could clutch dramatically to your bosom. Desire, friendship, fidelity, jealousy, longing, remembrance… all could be reduced to a tiny image, motto or object carrying a meaning that those in the know would understand.
Honestly, the human condition summed up in intaglios and seals by the Victorians that serve to show us that not much has changed really.
The Victorians and their Darker Impulses Captured Eternal
Scratch beneath the polite, buttoned-up exterior of the Victorians and their seals and you find death, desire, devotion, heartbreak, threats, dark humour and love so intense it apparently needed to last for all eternity. So, naturally as it’s spooky season and we are erring on the side of darkness, I thought we should explore some of our current favourites at Bauble Magpie….
You Deserve Thrashing 🌾
Subtlety has left the building. Amongst the declarations of love, remembrance and devotion, sometimes you find an antique seal whose message requires precisely zero interpretation: You Deserve Thrashing.
Was it affectionate teasing? A private joke? A rather pointed message intended for one VERY specific person? We will, frustratingly, never know. But that’s half the magic. They leave behind just enough of a story to make you desperate to know the rest or indeed forge your own.
And frankly, I have questions.
Take a look at the You Deserve Thrashing Intaglio.
I Only Change In Death 🍃
Now THIS is the sort of romantic intensity the Victorians did so magnificently. I Only Change in Death. Essentially: the only thing capable of changing how I feel is my own demise. But beneath the delicious melodrama is a rather beautiful declaration of constancy, fidelity and devotion, the idea that some bonds remain steadfast for as long as we do.And perhaps that’s why these old sentiments still hit quite so hard.
The language may be dramatic, but the impulse behind it is completely familiar: to find someone or something we love so deeply that we want to believe it cannot be altered by time, circumstance or anything else life decides to throw at us. Unwavering. Unchanging. Until death.
Take a look at the I Only Change in Death Intaglio
If I lose it, I am lost 🌻
This one is for the twin flames amongst us. A sunflower turning towards its sun, accompanied by the wonderfully intense sentiment “If I Lose It, I Am Lost.”
Because just as the sunflower seeks the light, some people seem to find their very own sun in another person. That rare, extraordinary connection with someone who understands you so completely that the thought of navigating life without them feels almost unthinkable. It’s devotion, dependence and the deliciously dramatic idea that you are my light, my compass, my person. A little intense? Perhaps. But then the greatest love stories rarely involve doing things by halves. For the Magpie who’s found her sunshine in human form.
Take a look at the If I Lose It I Am Lost Intaglio
What did the Victorians keep close?
This is where antique jewelry really gets me. Because sometimes there isn’t a motto or symbol to decipher. Sometimes there’s simply a space where somebody once kept something precious.
This antique 9ct gold photo locket fob has me wondering endlessly about what might once have lived inside.
A photograph?
A tiny portrait?
A scrap of a letter?
A few words written in a familiar hand?
And, more importantly, whose face did somebody need to carry close enough that they made a place for it beside their body? The person is gone. The photograph or letter may be gone. But the little gold place somebody made to hold them remains. And if that doesn’t get you, I’m not sure we can be friends.
See the Photo Locket Fob
And if eternal devotion is entirely your thing…
Eternity. Fidelity. Endless devotion. A love with absolutely no intention of releasing you. It’s all very romantic. It’s also, if you ask me, a little bit Dracula, which naturally makes me love it even more.
We’ve taken that wonderfully dramatic antique sentiment and transformed it into one of our Ready to Wear Bauble Magpie pendants, surrounded by diamonds and lush 18ct yellow gold. Because if you’re going to declare your devotion FOR ALL ETERNITY, you might as well throw in diamonds.
See the Thine Forever Pendant
I’m grateful the Victorians left us so much to muse and ponder over
For all the enormous differences between their world and ours, you see these symbols and realise that human beings really haven’t changed all that much. We still love deeply. We still grieve. We still lust, reminisce, threaten, joke, pine and occasionally think somebody deserves a good thrashing.
We just send WhatsApps about it now.
I know which I’d rather…
With love and shiny things, always
Emma and the Bauble Magpie Team
