Folks usually ask Courtney Lane if her home is haunted. She says it’s a good query; in any case, “I’ve a bunch of useless individuals’s hair in my studio.” Zen Hansen needed to block the phrase “serial killer” from the feedback on her Instagram web page. “Lots of people are like, ‘You have to be a serial killer,’” she says, noting that they accuse her of protecting our bodies in her basement. Lane’s home is just not haunted (“so far as I do know”) and Hansen hasn’t murdered even one individual. As an alternative, they’re two of a handful of artists who’re bringing Victorian hairwork again to the fashionable public’s consciousness, making and gathering jewellery, wreaths, and different tokens from human hair, usually (however not solely) as a kind of memorial for an individual who’s died.
Mourning jewellery first discovered its approach into western tradition within the sixteenth century, when it turned modern to put on memento mori (which means “do not forget that you have to die”) items that had been adorned with “skeletons, coffins, skulls, worms, and crossbones,” historian Ann Louise Luthi wrote in her e book Sentimental Jewellery. Finally, the general public moved away from these common reminders of their very own inevitable demise and on to items that memorialized particular people who had already died. And what higher approach is there to recollect a handed liked one than by preserving a literal piece of their physique in a bit of heirloom jewellery?
The Historical past of Hairwork
Across the flip of the nineteenth century, each Martha Washington and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton collected their husbands’ hair on their deathbeds, then distributed rings and brooches with locks of their hair inside amongst family and friends. However the follow is called Victorian hairwork as a result of Queen Victoria made it well-liked. The girl was nothing if not dedicated to a theme, reportedly donning herself in mourning apparel (black costume, black veil, jewellery made out of her husband’s hair) for many years after King Albert’s demise in 1861—and her topics adopted swimsuit. “She principally stayed in mourning clothes for the remainder of her life,” says Debra Schmidt Bach, Ph.D, curator of ornamental arts and particular exhibitions on the New York Historical Society. Throughout the pond, Schmidt Bach notes, Mary Todd Lincoln went into mourning in 1862 when her son Willie died, additionally sporting mourning clothes and jewellery for about three years. Schmidt Bach says it was these two ladies who strengthened the thought of sporting hair jewellery as a public expression of mourning.
“There was a interval in the midst of the nineteenth century the place demise was very current [in the United States] for numerous causes: toddler mortality, the hazards of childbirth, numerous epidemics, the Civil Conflict,” Schmidt Bach says. Because of this, a so-called “cult of mourning” popped up throughout the nation, coinciding with the Romantic period, which started on the finish of the 1700s. Throughout that interval, “Everybody was very open about their feelings,” says Sarah Duggan, ornamental arts of the Gulf South venture supervisor at The Historic New Orleans Collection. “Every thing’s very expressive…That’s while you begin to see the extra elaborate [hairwork] items.”
(A word: I’m skeptical about my white European ancestors’ functionality to invent this follow from nothing. The historians I spoke to for this piece agree that it’s possible that cultures throughout the globe have dabbled in some form of hairwork since just about without end, however any data earlier than the nineteenth century are spotty. “Hair is such an natural materials,” Hansen says, referring to its behavior of ultimately disintegrating totally. “I feel we have misplaced a number of historical past about how it will’ve been used.” The proof we do have from South America, Asia, and Africa seems to be from practical objects, like netting or baskets or bedding—issues that wouldn’t have been high of thoughts to write down about or attempt to protect the best way one would possibly for a particular piece of jewellery.)
Victorian hairwork may vary from the quite simple—a number of items of hair tucked inside a locket reverse a small portrait—to the extraordinarily ornate—floral wreaths, braided bracelets, and complicated embroidered scenes made out of strands of hair as an alternative of thread. The smaller items, particularly, had been additionally exchanged as love tokens (of each the platonic and non-platonic varieties) made out of the hair of residing lovers or family members. “It’s extremely intimate and private,” Duggan says. “You’re truly holding a bit of somebody’s physique.” Plus, she says, these little portraits may get a little bit spicy. “There’s one notorious one which’s only a lady’s breasts,” she recollects.
Though the vast majority of the Victorian hairwork items you’ll find in museum’s immediately are from the collections of wealthier individuals, Duggan says some iteration of the pattern possible crossed financial courses. “Solely actually rich individuals would have the means to fee a miniature portrait or get a elaborate piece of jewellery constructed,” she says. “However who’s to say that folks didn’t hold a lock of hair wrapped in material?” Schmidt Bach agrees that the extra ornate designs had been possible reserved for the higher class: “It’s a practice that concerned each time and money, and someone who needed to work very, very arduous for wages did not in all probability have time or the cash to buy mourning items.”
In comparison with a modern-day TikTok trend, the hairwork fad lasted an eternity, changing into so mainstream that girls’s magazines recurrently printed patterns for informal hairworkers to recreate at residence and big-name shops like Tiffany & Co. began promoting customized hairwork items. “You could possibly order hair jewellery by the mail,” Schmidt Bach says. However, as all tendencies do, this one ultimately pale from vogue, killed by a deadly mixture of germ principle (Hansen: “Folks began to appreciate hair may very well be soiled or maintain ailments.”) images (Duggan: “What’s even higher [than a lock of hair]? An precise image of somebody.”) and the rise of the funeral industry, which made the post-death course of very hands-off for many Individuals. By the 1900s, “all types of mourning jewelry had been now seen with repugnance,” Luthi wrote. “There was to be no revival of mourning jewelry within the twentieth century.”
Trendy-Day Hairwork
However right here within the twenty-first? We simply is likely to be able to embrace the follow once more. By my commentary, it’s principally millennial ladies—particularly those raised on Nightmare Earlier than Christmas and Paramore (once more, my individuals)—who’re main the best way, sharing their hand-crafted hair jewellery, wreaths, and portraits on social media with 1000’s of fascinated followers. To study the craft, you could possibly head to Våmhus, Sweden, a small village that a number of individuals I interviewed talked about with excited awe. It’s, based on Hansen, the one place on this planet the place the custom of hairwork by no means stopped. “They’ve a beautiful cultural heart there the place you possibly can see 1000’s of items of hairwork,” says Lane, who’s visited the city and witnessed demonstrations by a number of the ladies who nonetheless follow the approach. Hansen has taken programs with Karen Keenan, who traveled to Våmhus and now is likely one of the few individuals who teaches in-person courses on the Swedish table braiding technique, during which hair is draped throughout small wood tables and held in place by weights in the course of the braiding course of.
Most of the artists I spoke to additionally depend on probably the most complete information to hairwork revealed in the course of the Victorian period, Self-Teacher within the Artwork of Hair Work, Dressing Hair, Making Curls, Switches, Braids, and Hair Jewellery of Each Description by Mark Campbell. Launched in 1867, it’s available for free online and incorporates over 100 patterns for various kinds of hairworking braids. Though Campbell is by far probably the most well-known Victorian hairworker, Hansen is discovering in her analysis that he could not have been such a grand innovator. In a nutshell, based on Hansen: Campbell exhibits up in Chicago out of nowhere, wins an award on the Mechanics Institute Truthful, opens a hairworking retailer however by no means credit a mentor or provides any trace as to the place he discovered the craft, makes too-wild-to-be-true claims within the advertisements for his hairwork enterprise, has a spouse who results in an insane asylum, is sued a number of instances, has a enterprise companion who vanishes, and fairly presumably wasn’t even a hairworker within the first place. “I don’t know that he was truly doing the braids himself, as a result of a number of the patterns in his e book don’t make sense,” Hansen says. As tends to occur with so-called ladies’s work, a number of probably the most prolific artists possible will stay nameless. “Textile arts are typically thought-about extra female and due to this fact not as elite as different types of craftsmanship,” Duggan says. “Girls aren’t often getting named credit score for the stitching and weaving and knitting work they do.”
Due to social media, fashionable hobbyists don’t must rely solely on the writings of a doable grifter. As an alternative, they’ve entry to individuals like Hansen and Lane who undoubtedly are doing the braids themselves and are joyful to unfold the data. Hallie Schneck, a part-time dog groomer, began making and promoting her personal hairwork items about two years in the past (from human hair; “I have not actually introduced that facet of my life to my job,” Schneck says, although she has since accepted commissions from individuals who need items made out of pet hair). She credit Hansen’s movies for her personal curiosity within the craft. “Her work is simply attractive,” Schneck says.
It’s a comparatively cheap pastime to get into, so long as you may get your arms on some hair. “I’m fortunate that everyone who is aware of me is aware of the sort of artwork I’ve been doing,” Schneck says. “I’ve had lots of people donate their hair for me to work on.” (She’ll often make them a little bit flower bouquet out of their hair, just like the one pictured above, as a thanks.) Because the hair is weighted in the course of the braiding course of, strands of any curl kind can be utilized to create these items, however in the event you’re not fairly able to ask family and friends for his or her hair clippings, Lane says it’s fairly simple to search out Victorian-era hair at property gross sales or vintage outlets—individuals within the 1800s usually saved complete ponytails, each for hairworking and making wigs or hairpieces.
As within the nineteenth century, there are a lot of various kinds of hairworking accomplished immediately. Margaret Cross, proprietor of the mourning jewellery firm Love & Loss by Margaret Cross, found the follow after her companion died in 2008. She used his hair to make items for herself and to provide to his household, and it “simply form of snowballed from there,” she says. As an alternative of the braided cords artists like Lane and Hansen create to make necklaces, bracelets, and rings, Cross’s jewellery usually encapsulates hair behind domed glass. This fashion, the hair won’t ever contact the wearer’s pores and skin, arguably making it an ideal stepping stone into hairwork jewellery for many who would possibly nonetheless be a bit skeeved out by the thought. “After I noticed hair jewellery I used to be like, ‘this guidelines,’” Cross recollects. “However persons are disgusted by this. It’s so fascinating.”
Many individuals are, certainly, nonetheless disgusted by the thought of sporting another person’s hair round their wrist, although there’s little (if any) distinction between these disembodied strands and those you’d possible fortunately braid in the event that they had been nonetheless hooked up to a liked one’s head—it’s all only a bunch of useless cells. Lane, who ceaselessly shows her work at oddities festivals, says she’s all the time stunned by the response her items can invoke. At one current occasion, “the sales space subsequent to me had mummified animals and useless issues in jars, and this very huge, burly man got here as much as that sales space and was like, ‘oh, cool, a cycloptic fetal pig,’” she recollects. “Then he comes up and picks up a little bit piece of my jewellery and I say, ‘that is made out of human hair,’ and he dropped it. He couldn’t get away from my stand quick sufficient.”
