Folks typically 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 holding our bodies in her basement. Lane’s home just isn’t haunted (“so far as I do know”) and Hansen hasn’t murdered even one particular person. As a substitute, they’re two of a handful of artists who’re bringing Victorian hairwork again to the trendy public’s consciousness, making and accumulating jewellery, wreaths, and different tokens from human hair, typically (however not solely) as a sort of memorial for an individual who’s died.
Mourning jewellery first discovered its approach into western tradition within the sixteenth century, when it turned trendy to put on memento mori (which means “keep in mind that you have to die”) items that had been embellished with “skeletons, coffins, skulls, worms, and crossbones,” historian Ann Louise Luthi wrote in her guide 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 cherished 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 apply is named Victorian hairwork as a result of Queen Victoria made it widespread. The girl was nothing if not dedicated to a theme, reportedly donning herself in mourning apparel (black costume, black veil, jewellery constituted of her husband’s hair) for many years after King Albert’s dying in 1861—and her topics adopted swimsuit. “She mainly 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 carrying mourning clothes and jewellery for about three years. Schmidt Bach says it was these two girls who strengthened the thought of carrying hair jewellery as a public expression of mourning.
“There was a interval in the midst of the nineteenth century the place dying was very current [in the United States] for numerous causes: toddler mortality, the hazards of childbirth, varied epidemics, the Civil Struggle,” 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 undertaking supervisor at The Historic New Orleans Collection. “All the pieces’s very expressive…That’s if you begin to see the extra elaborate [hairwork] items.”
(A observe: I’m skeptical about my white European ancestors’ functionality to invent this apply from nothing. The historians I spoke to for this piece agree that it’s possible that cultures throughout the globe have dabbled in some kind 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 completely. “I believe we have misplaced a whole lot 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 useful gadgets, like netting or baskets or bedding—issues that wouldn’t have been high of thoughts to write down about or attempt to protect the way in which one may for a particular piece of jewellery.)
Victorian hairwork might 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 an alternative 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 residing lovers or relations. “It’s extremely intimate and private,” Duggan says. “You’re really holding a chunk of somebody’s physique.” Plus, she says, these little portraits might get a bit of spicy. “There’s one notorious one which’s only a girl’s breasts,” she remembers.
Though the vast majority of the Victorian hairwork items you will discover in museum’s at present are from the collections of wealthier individuals, Duggan says some iteration of the development possible crossed financial lessons. “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 individuals didn’t preserve 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 cash, and any individual 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 trend, the hairwork fad lasted an eternity, changing into so mainstream that ladies’s magazines usually printed patterns for informal hairworkers to recreate at dwelling and big-name shops like Tiffany & Co. began promoting customized hairwork items. “You may order hair jewellery by way of the mail,” Schmidt Bach says. However, as all developments do, this one ultimately pale from style, killed by a deadly mixture of germ concept (Hansen: “Folks began to appreciate hair may very well be soiled or maintain ailments.”) pictures (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 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 apply once more. By my statement, it’s largely millennial girls—particularly those raised on Nightmare Earlier than Christmas and Paramore (once more, my individuals)—who’re main the way in which, sharing their hand-crafted hair jewellery, wreaths, and portraits on social media with 1000’s of fascinated followers. To be taught the craft, you would head to Våmhus, Sweden, a small village that a number of individuals I interviewed talked about with excited awe. It’s, in response to Hansen, the one place on the earth the place the custom of hairwork by no means stopped. “They’ve a stunning cultural middle 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 girls who nonetheless apply the method. Hansen has taken programs with Karen Keenan, who traveled to Våmhus and now is likely one of the few individuals who teaches in-person lessons on the Swedish table braiding technique, 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 essentially the most complete information to hairwork printed 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 available for free online and incorporates over 100 patterns for various kinds of hairworking braids. Though Campbell is by far essentially 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 response to Hansen: Campbell reveals 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 offers 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 leads to 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 really doing the braids himself, as a result of a whole lot of the patterns in his guide don’t make sense,” Hansen says. As tends to occur with so-called girls’s work, a whole lot of essentially the most prolific artists possible will stay nameless. “Textile arts are typically thought of extra female and due to this fact not as elite as different types of craftsmanship,” Duggan says. “Girls should not often getting named credit score for the stitching and weaving and knitting work they do.”
Because of social media, trendy hobbyists don’t should rely solely on the writings of a potential grifter. As a substitute, they’ve entry to individuals like Hansen and Lane who undoubtedly are doing the braids themselves and are glad 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 never 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 interest to get into, so long as you will get your fingers on some hair. “I’m fortunate that everyone who is aware of me is aware of the form 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 bit of flower bouquet out of their hair, just like the one pictured above, as a thanks.) Because the hair is weighted through the braiding course of, strands of any curl kind can be utilized to create these items, however if you happen to’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 typically saved total ponytails, each for hairworking and making wigs or hairpieces.
As within the nineteenth century, there are lots of various kinds of hairworking accomplished at present. Margaret Cross, proprietor of the mourning jewellery firm Love & Loss by Margaret Cross, found the apply after her associate died in 2008. She used his hair to make items for herself and to present to his household, and it “simply kind of snowballed from there,” she says. As a substitute 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 manner, 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 may nonetheless be a bit skeeved out by the thought. “After I noticed hair jewellery I used to be like, ‘this guidelines,’” Cross remembers. “However individuals are disgusted by this. It’s so fascinating.”
Many individuals are, certainly, nonetheless disgusted by the thought of carrying another person’s hair round their wrist, even if 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 cherished one’s head—it’s all only a bunch of useless cells. Lane, who incessantly shows her work at oddities festivals, says she’s all the time shocked 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 massive, burly man got here as much as that sales space and was like, ‘oh, cool, a cycloptic fetal pig,’” she remembers. “Then he comes up and picks up a bit of 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.”
