Why did a diamond monogram brooch sell for £187,200 against an auction estimate of £5,000? It wasn’t just a nice piece of 1950s jewellery but a 21st-birthday present for Princess Margaret, part of the record-breaking sale of her jewellery in 2006. This transformed it from a pretty jewel to a very special object. Freddie Mercury’s iconic snake bangle — as worn in the 1975 Bohemian Rhapsody video — sold for £698,500 in September 2023. The buyer might have appreciated the snake’s traditional association with healing, rebirth and love, but more likely the thought of wearing a jewel that had adorned his wrist was the real draw.
Jane Austen is still one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, so when a simple little turquoise and gold ring came on the market in 2012 it attracted huge attention. Owning and wearing Austen’s own ring is a way to put yourself into her story. Did she wear it dancing at parties? Was it on her hand as she composed Emma or Pride and Prejudice? It was bought by the American country singer Kelly Clarkson for the impressive price of £152,450, a proof of Austen’s international fame. Although the ring itself is very modest, it was passed down through the family as a relic of “Aunt Jane”, one of her few surviving personal items. After a government export ban and a public appeal, it was bought by Jane Austen’s House Museum and is now viewable by all Janeites.
If jewels owned by a famous figure have a particular value, adding part of their own body takes it to a new level. What could be more intimate than a lock of hair, a trouser button or even a piece of skull?
Celebrity relics go back centuries. After the execution of Charles I in 1649 people surged forward to dip their handkerchiefs into his blood, creating gruesome tokens that were set into lockets and ring bezels. A heart-shaped pendant, now in the National Museum of Scotland, holds a piece of the bloodstained shirt he wore for his execution as well as a lock of the king’s hair. These jewels became something between a political statement and a religious relic, worn as a sign of continuing allegiance to the Stuart cause.
The locket made for Sir William Beatty, the ship’s surgeon on HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship, connects us to a pivotal moment in British history. Beatty removed the fatal bullet from Nelson’s body after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, with the gold braid of Nelson’s uniform still fused to it. The bullet was placed in a locket that Beatty wore for the remainder of his life, a link to a friend but also to a national hero. Nelson also asked for his hair to be cut off and given to his lover, Emma Hamilton, and many locks of hair were made into commemorative jewellery, still much prized by collectors.
Advertisement
After the poet Percy Shelley died in a shipwreck in Italy in 1822, his body was burnt on the beach in the presence of his friends Edward Trelawney and Lord Byron. Trelawney collected fragments of Shelley’s charred skull and jawbone, which were eventually made into pieces of jewellery, including a locket owned by William Michael Rossetti, the brother of the painter Dante Gabriel, then bequeathed to William’s daughter.
Some very surprising objects are enriched by their celebrity connections and merit an expensive jewel to hold them. When the French composer Charles Gounod lost a button from his trousers in 1889, a keen admirer took it to a jeweller on the Rue de la Paix and had it set in a gold and diamond pin, to be proudly worn as a souvenir of the great musician. Rather tastelessly she also showed off her jewel to Gounod’s wife.
Human hair often found its way into jewellery. It was described in 1860 as the “most delicate and lasting of our materials”, a piece of the body that could be easily removed and which survives almost unaltered. The hair of famous people was traded as exceptionally desirable celebrity souvenirs and even animals came in for attention. Hair from the Duke of Wellington’s famous warhorse, Copenhagen, was collected and made into jewels, including a locket proudly worn by the daughter of Wellington’s usher.
Without authentication these jewels have no value, as the case of Beethoven’s hair shows. In 1826 the pianist Anton Halm wanted a lock of Beethoven’s famous hair for his wife, perhaps to wear in a locket. They were dismayed to be tricked by the grey hairs of a goat instead, sent by a friend of the musician. Beethoven was so embarrassed by this that he cut off a chunk of his own hair as a replacement and presented it to them. Strands of Beethoven’s hair are still valued by collectors — a lock sold for over £35,000 in 2019.
A jewel linked to a famous person (or horse) is a way to hold hands across time, to feel a personal and direct connection with a distant and admired figure. It’s fairy dust sprinkled on to ordinary objects, transforming them into priceless treasures.
