Hair is deeply personal and something expected to be attached to a person’s body. But in many museum collections, antique stores, and family collections one can encounter complex, knotted, sculptural wreaths constructed out of human hair. These objects, known as hair wreaths, hair work, or hair art, are fascinating objects that can reveal much about the lives of people from the past.
Hair work is part of a series of mourning traditions that really crystalized in the nineteenth century. This is the world of mourning that many modern people imagine when we think of the past: including traditions of wearing black (and then, slowly, changing to lighter, less-black colors), covering mirrors, death photography, and reorganizing one’s social calendar. These traditions are from a specific time and place. In England, this time was marked by the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, in 1861 and her subsequent very public mourning. In the United States, this period of time was the American Civil War, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the nation’s grappling with the physical and inescapable presence of death.
Hair was given as a memento since antiquity, and would often be kept in jewelry or in a locket. Sometimes this would be for loved ones who had died (as I am concerned with here), or for loved ones who were away, or to commemorate new love. Either way, hair is the ideal memento of a loved one. Hair comes from a person and is, in part, tied to the very essence of their body. Likewise, hair is a part of the body that does not decay quickly and making it into an art piece was a way for people to have a tangible reminder of the person they had lost. To make a memento out of someone’s hair is to hold their very essence in one’s hands.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the art of hair work became very popular among mourners. Mourners would collect the hair of loved ones and weave it with wires to create flowers and other shapes. Professional hair workers advertised their services in newspapers and catalogs, but many chose to do their own hair work themselves.[1]The home hair worker could use patterns published in books and magazines, working from simpler to more complex. They could construct hair worked objects that were anywhere from a brooch or a piece of jewelry to a large framed wreath of flowers constructed out of hair.
Enter, then, me. I am a historian, a museum professional, and consider myself a maker. I especially like to learn historic trades and crafts as a way to teach about and to research about the past. Hair work seemed like a fun option for something to try to teach myself. In my experience, when people encounter hair wreaths they usually have one of two reactions: horror and revulsion or deep fascination. I’ve always been the second: I think they’re amazing objects and an amazing window into the past. Hair work has always been high on my list of historic crafts to learn.
When I set out to learn to make hair work, I had no experience doing it at all. I set out to research the process. In researching, I consulted three sources. First, I consulted secondary sources on hair work and the role of hair art within systems of mourning.[2] Armed with that background knowledge, I felt relatively confident to then delve into the primary documentation. Luckily for me (and for people wanting to learn hair work!) there are those how-to manuals I mentioned! Two that I found particularly helpful for my work were Mark Campbell, Self Instructor in the Art of Hair Work, Dressing Hair, Making Curls, and Hair Jewelry of Every Description (1867) and William Halford and Charles Young, The Jewellers’ Book of Patterns in Hair Work: Containing a Great Variety of Copper-Plate Engravings of Devices and Patterns in Hair: Suitable for Mourning Jewelry, Brooches, Rings, Guards, Alberts, Necklets, Lockets, Bracelets, Miniatures, Studs, Earrings, etc., etc., etc., (1864: no one made titles like authors in the nineteenth century).[3] The final source I accessed was hair wreaths themselves, both in person and through digital collections online. I wish I could say that the above research: secondary, primary, and the object itself, made me feel somewhat confident to make some hair work. In some ways, it made me more confused: there is nothing more opaque sometimes than a vaguely illustrated nineteenth-century instructional text. At some point, though, I felt as ready as I ever would be to go on to the next step and try to make some hair work.
Having done the research, I knew there were different versions of hair work that could be done. I settled on one of the simpler ones, which I knew would be easier to try. I also knew that it involved only a small amount of materials: wire, a piece of wood to wrap around, an optional clamp, gum arabic, and, of course, hair (ideally around a foot of nicely combed hair). The first four things I had at my disposal already: but the hair I questioned. I had no problem using hair to make hairwork with (why not?) but decided that, perhaps, for learning and experimenting a human hair stand-in might be a good choice. After some research and wandering through the aisles of my local craft store, I settled on doll hair. With only some odd looks from the cashier with my random purchase, I was on my way and ready to give it a shot.
Hair work, at least the simple version I was doing, is all about repetition. The hairworker attaches the lock of hair to a stick with a large piece of wire, then wraps the hair around the stick and secures it with both sides of the wire, holding it in place. Essentially, it is a braid. Once the strand is done, it can be removed from the stick, and bent into whatever shape is desired: the most common, of course, being the petals of a flower. In theory this was simple, in practice, a little less so. I did some scrambling around to figure out the proper ways to hold myself, the materials, and the proper tension to wind it with (it’s all about the tension: not too tight and not too loose). Finally, I had done some somewhat passable hairwork. Not pretty enough to open my own hairworking business that I could advertise my services for mourning Victorians: but not bad either.
I always experienced hair wreaths and hair work as something behind glass. Something that was made in the distant past and now preserved in museum collections. A particularly fascinating and amazing thing, of course, but another thing on a shelf nonetheless. In learning how to make hair wreaths, I gained a new appreciation for this fascinating art form as a lived experience. The process is deeply personal and involves the careful weaving of hair (or, in my case, doll hair). The hair worker is constantly touching the hair, moving the hair, manipulating the hair, and pressing the hair into the position they want it to be. The hair worker constantly feels the hair moving intimately between their fingers. Putting myself in the place of a mourner, the people who would have actually been making hair wreaths in the home, there is something to be said about the process of making them. The holding of the hair, the moving of the hair, and the weaving of the hair would allow close proximity to the body of a lost loved one. The repetitious, quiet work would allow for contemplation and remembrance. I had always thought of the hair wreath as something static to be looked at: something to be seen. I realize now that the process is the thing: making the hair wreath is an act of mourning and devotion in and of itself, just as keeping a hair wreath was.
For us as modern people, the idea of the hair wreath is something strange, macabre, and shows an “unhealthy” fascination with death. We might imagine the people of the nineteenth century as constantly in mourning and constantly thinking about things that we would rather avoid, such as the existential terror of our short earthly existence. We should remember, though, that they lived in a world where they encountered death on a very personal level. In our modern world, the dead are cared for outside of the home, are embalmed, are viewed in a funeral home, and are buried. Death has been made sterile and taken out of the home and people in the modern world have become increasingly separate from the reality of death. In the nineteenth century, ideas of embalming, the funeral home, and death professionals were new. Before, that death was part of the home and part of life, something to be considered, interacted with, and contextualized. Mourning art and material culture helped in that.
Making hair wreaths and thinking about this has taught me one thing: the people of the nineteenth century might have dealt with death in a very personal way and may have dealt with it very publicly and materially, but they believed it to be part of life. Something that was tied deeply to human experience. It was human to mourn and die, just as it was to live and enjoy life. To keep the hair of a loved one was to be reminded of time spent in life together, and also a reminder of one’s own eventual death. In a way, the people of the nineteenth century weren’t obsessed with death: they were entranced by life and the people they knew in it.
Tim Betz is a museum professional, historian, and artist. He teaches art history at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, is the Executive Director of the Morgan Log House, a historic site in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and is working on his PhD in History, where he focuses on collecting in the Spanish Empire. He is working on a book, Makerspaces and Museums: Hands-On History at Museums and Historic Sites, which focuses on the power of making as a tool for learning about the past (to be published by Rowman and Littlefield).
[1] Shu-chuan Yan, “The Art of Working in Hair: Hair Jewelry and Ornamental Handiwork in Victorian Britain,” The Journal of Modern Craft 12 (2019), 123-139.
[2] Some examples of secondary sources I consulted are Mütter Museum, A Brief History of Hair Art As Seen in Woven Strands: The Art of Human Hair Work (Philadelphia: Mütter Museum, 2018); Helen Sheumaker, Love Entwined: the Curious History of Hairwork (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
[3] Mark Campbell, Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work, Dressing Hair, Making Curls, Switches, Braids, and Hair Jewelry of Every Description (Campbell: New York, 1867); William Halford and Charles Young, The Jewellers’ Book of Patterns in Hair Work: Containing a Great Variety of Copper-Plate Engravings of Devices and Patterns in Hair: Suitable for Mourning Jewelry, Brooches, Rings, Guards, Alberts, Necklets, Lockets, Bracelets, Miniatures, Studs, Earrings, etc., etc., etc. (William Halford and Charles Young: London, 1864).
Source for featured image: Hair Wreath, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC., c. 1860
Grave Matters 