Читать книгу The Viscount’s Veiled Lady - Jenni Fletcher - Страница 9

Whitby jet is a semi-precious black gemstone that has been used in jewellery-making since the Bronze Age. It is renowned for being both lightweight and incredibly hard, as well as for taking on a vibrant shine when polished. Formed from the fossilised remains of Araucaria trees (early ancestors of modern monkey-puzzle trees) it can still be found in a stretch of shale along the North Yorkshire coastline, now known as the Heritage Coast.

Examples of Whitby jet were displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and it became popular after the death of Prince Albert in 1861 when Queen Victoria went into a state of semi-permanent mourning. Mourning itself became particularly ritualised during this era with widows forced to become almost living memorials to their deceased husbands.

By the 1870s, the demand for Whitby jet was at its height. Around 1,500 jet workers were employed in approximately 200 jet workshops throughout the town, but, unfortunately, it was a boom industry that lasted for around a century and then fell out of favour, partly because of cheaper imports and partly because it failed to keep up with changes in fashion. Jet mining itself was made illegal in the late nineteenth century to prevent coastal erosion.

As a result, many traditional methods of carving have been lost and modern jet workers are largely self-taught. I’m grateful to Hal and Imogen Redvers-Jones at the Whitby Jet Heritage Centre for answering my questions about Victorian jet-carving techniques and to Botham’s of Whitby for providing so much delicious research!