摘要：journey of human relics in their reliquary/containers and their evolution into mourn-ing jewelry that uses hair, before touching upon the contemporary relevance of hair in mourning jewelry.Speaking reliquaries and their significanceThe historical development of mourning jewelry can be traced to the Middle Ages. Speaking Reliquaries - receptacles shaped like body-parts that contain saintly rel-ics - may be seen as not-so-distant cousins of mourning jewelry that uses hair. An arm reliquary might only be one part of a saint, but was deemed as powerful and holy as the complete body (fig.1). Caroline Walker-Bynum tells us that these containers become "not so much an expression of what is within as a restoration - even redemption - of the body part."
