Folks typically ask Courtney Lane if her home is haunted. She says it’s a good query; in spite of everything, “I’ve a bunch of lifeless folks’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 should be a serial killer,’” she says, noting that they accuse her of holding our bodies in her basement. Lane’s home will not be haunted (“so far as I do know”) and Hansen hasn’t murdered even one particular person. 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, typically (however not solely) as a kind of memorial for an individual who’s died.
Mourning jewellery first discovered its manner into western tradition within the sixteenth century, when it turned modern to put on memento mori (that 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 ebook Sentimental Jewelry. 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 manner is there to recollect a handed beloved one than by preserving a literal piece of their physique in a chunk 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 observe is called Victorian hairwork as a result of Queen Victoria made it widespread. The lady was nothing if not dedicated to a theme, reportedly donning herself in mourning apparel (black gown, black veil, jewellery constituted of her husband’s hair) for many years after King Albert’s loss of life 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 Historic 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 concept of sporting hair jewellery as a public expression of mourning.
“There was a interval in the course of the nineteenth century the place loss of life was very current [in the United States] for various causes: toddler mortality, the hazards of childbirth, numerous epidemics, the Civil Battle,” Schmidt Bach says. In consequence, 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 challenge supervisor at The Historic New Orleans Assortment. “The whole lot’s very expressive…That’s while you begin to see the extra elaborate [hairwork] items.”
(A be aware: I’m skeptical about my white European ancestors’ functionality to invent this observe from nothing. The historians I spoke to for this piece agree that it’s doubtless that cultures throughout the globe have dabbled in some type of hairwork since just about eternally, 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 solely. “I believe we have misplaced lots of historical past about how it might’ve been used.” The proof we do have from South America, Asia, and Africa seems to be from purposeful gadgets, like netting or baskets or bedding—issues that wouldn’t have been prime of thoughts to put in writing about or attempt to protect the best way one may for a particular piece of knickknack.)
Victorian hairwork may vary from the quite simple—just a few items of hair tucked inside a locket reverse a small portrait—to the extraordinarily ornate—floral wreaths, braided bracelets, and complex embroidered scenes constituted of strands of hair as a substitute of thread. The smaller items, specifically, had been additionally exchanged as love tokens (of each the platonic and non-platonic varieties) constituted of the hair of dwelling lovers or kin. “It’s extremely intimate and private,” Duggan says. “You’re truly holding a chunk of somebody’s physique.” Plus, she says, these little portraits may get slightly 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 will discover in museum’s immediately are from the collections of wealthier folks, Duggan says some iteration of the development doubtless crossed financial lessons. “Solely actually rich folks would have the means to fee a miniature portrait or get a elaborate piece of knickknack constructed,” she says. “However who’s to say that folks didn’t hold a lock of hair wrapped in cloth?” Schmidt Bach agrees that the extra ornate designs had been doubtless reserved for the higher class: “It’s a convention that concerned each time and cash, and anyone who needed to work very, very onerous for wages did not in all probability have time or the cash to buy mourning items.”
In comparison with a modern-day TikTok development, the hairwork fad lasted an eternity, changing into so mainstream that girls’s magazines recurrently printed patterns for informal hairworkers to recreate at house and big-name shops like Tiffany & Co. began promoting customized hairwork items. “You might order hair jewellery by means of the mail,” Schmidt Bach says. However, as all traits do, this one ultimately light from trend, killed by a deadly mixture of germ principle (Hansen: “Folks began to understand hair might be soiled or maintain illnesses.”) images (Duggan: “What’s even higher [than a lock of hair]? An precise image of somebody.”) and the rise of the funeral trade, which made the post-death course of very hands-off for many People. By the 1900s, “all types of mourning jewelry had been now considered with repugnance,” Luthi wrote. “There was to be no revival of mourning jewelry within the twentieth century.”
Fashionable-Day Hairwork
However right here within the twenty-first? We simply may be able to embrace the observe once more. By my commentary, it’s principally millennial ladies—particularly those raised on Nightmare Earlier than Christmas and Paramore (once more, my folks)—who’re main the best way, sharing their hand-crafted hair jewellery, wreaths, and portraits on social media with hundreds of fascinated followers. To be taught the craft, you might head to Våmhus, Sweden, a small village that a number of folks I interviewed talked about with excited awe. It’s, in line with Hansen, the one place on this planet the place the custom of hairwork by no means stopped. “They’ve a stunning cultural middle there the place you may see hundreds of items of hairwork,” says Lane, who’s visited the city and witnessed demonstrations by a few of the ladies who nonetheless observe the method. Hansen has taken programs with Karen Keenan, who traveled to Våmhus and now is among the few individuals who teaches in-person lessons on the Swedish desk braiding method, wherein hair is draped throughout small picket tables and held in place by weights through the braiding course of.
Most of the artists I spoke to additionally depend on probably the most complete information to hairwork revealed through 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 obtainable free of charge on-line and incorporates over 100 patterns for several types of hairworking braids. Though Campbell is by far probably the most well-known Victorian hairworker, Hansen is discovering in her analysis that he might not have been such a grand innovator. In a nutshell, in line with 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 realized 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 occasions, has a enterprise associate who vanishes, and fairly probably 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 lots of the patterns in his ebook don’t make sense,” Hansen says. As tends to occur with so-called ladies’s work, lots of probably the most prolific artists doubtless will stay nameless. “Textile arts are typically thought of extra female and subsequently not as elite as different types of craftsmanship,” Duggan says. “Ladies are usually not often getting named credit score for the stitching and weaving and knitting work they do.”
Because of social media, fashionable hobbyists don’t should rely solely on the writings of a potential grifter. As an alternative, they’ve entry to folks like Hansen and Lane who undoubtedly are doing the braids themselves and are comfortable to unfold the information. Hallie Schneck, a part-time canine 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 constituted of pet hair). She credit Hansen’s movies for her personal curiosity within the craft. “Her work is simply beautiful,” Schneck says.
It’s a comparatively cheap passion to get into, so long as you will get your palms on some hair. “I’m fortunate that everyone who is aware of me is aware of the type 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 slightly flower bouquet out of their hair, just like the one pictured above, as a thanks.) For the reason that hair is weighted through the braiding course of, strands of any curl kind can be utilized to create these items, however should 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 retailers—folks within the 1800s typically saved complete ponytails, each for hairworking and making wigs or hairpieces.
As within the nineteenth century, there are lots of several types of hairworking carried out immediately. Margaret Cross, proprietor of the mourning jewellery firm Love & Loss by Margaret Cross, found the observe after her associate died in 2008. She used his hair to make items for herself and to provide to his household, and it “simply type 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 sometimes encapsulates hair behind domed glass. This manner, the hair won’t ever contact the wearer’s pores and skin, arguably making it an ideal stepping stone into hairwork jewellery for individuals who may nonetheless be a bit skeeved out by the concept. “Once I noticed hair jewellery I used to be like, ‘this guidelines,’” Cross recollects. “However individuals are disgusted by this. It’s so fascinating.”
Many individuals are, certainly, nonetheless disgusted by the concept of sporting another person’s hair round their wrist, although there may be little (if any) distinction between these disembodied strands and those you’d doubtless fortunately braid in the event that they had been nonetheless hooked up to a beloved one’s head—it’s all only a bunch of lifeless cells. Lane, who steadily 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 lifeless 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 slightly 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.”