Historical information

This locket is from the museum's collection of objects relating to Wilfred Clarence Busse. Busse was born in Chiltern in 1898, completed his secondary education as Wesley College in the early twentieth century, and went on to study law at the University of Melbourne. As a lawyer, he spent time in the room of Supreme Court Judge Bernard Cussen (1859-1933). Judge Cussen was popular, known for being just and precise and for completing through statutory consolidation in his spare time. As well as working as a lawyer, Busse wrote historical fiction inspired by his life in Chiltern, these included The Blue Beyond; A Romance of the Early Days in South Eastern Australia" and "The Golden Plague: A Romance of the Early Fifties," which won the T.E.Role gold medal for the best historical novel in 1930 and went on to become a best seller. He was a member of the Chiltern Athenaeum until his death in 1960.

The placing of hair in lockets was a common 19th and early 20th century, with Queen Victoria wearing a locket containing a piece of Albert’s hair after his death in 1861. Wearing a loved one’s hair or giving a lock of your hair to someone for wearing, could be a gesture of love and friendship, or of mourning. The tangibility and personal nature of hair made it a common keepsake, especially in cases of high mortality or where family members were separated by oceans without the possibility of air travel. The intention and origin of this locket is currently unknown, but it is likely it was a keepsake of love or mourning, either way, a emotional object.

Significance

This object artistically significant as an example of late 19th/early 20th century jewellery, and social and spiritual sigifiicance as locket containing a piece of hair, which, regardless of exact intention, imbues it with a strong emotional aura.

Physical description

A small dark metal locket with a decorative leaf pattern on the exterior. The locket contains a small amount of reddish hair, supposedly from a loved one or family member of the original owner, and a degraded image that may have ocne represented a person.