Many events have paused in the UK as the country plunged into mourning after Queen Elizabeth II died. But we can all turn the mourning mood into an inspiration rediscovering hairwork, that is jewellery made with human hair.
Albeit slightly disturbing, hair jewellery can be rather intriguing, especially when we consider the techniques employed to make these pieces.
Originally, hairwork started around the 17th-18th centuries, but this art was popularized in the 19th century by Queen Victoria in Britain.
The Queen, who ruled the British Empire from 1837 until her death in 1901, devoted her life to grieving her beloved husband Prince Consort Albert who died in 1861. Queen Victoria turned mourning into a life-long mood and a fashion trend. She was very keen on hairwork and often wore a locket of Albert's hair around her neck (it is actually thought that Prince Albert introduced this fashion from Germany).
Hairwork is mentioned in Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens and Charlotte M. Yonge's novels, while the main character in Wilkie Collins' "Hide and Seek" (1854) declares that a hair bracelet is "in England one of the commonest ornaments of woman's wear."
Why hair in the first place? Well, for different reasons, one practical as well: photography was new and expensive, portrait painters were not often available and mortality rates were high due to disease and war.
Besides, hair is a fine material, and a piece of jewellery worn against the skin represents a bond with the dearly departed, or with somebody – family, friends and lovers – still alive and dear to someone's heart (it was a common practice to swap locks of hair as a token of love or friendship and there were also popular hair pieces that women would make for their fiancés, including watch fobs, tiepins or bookmarks). For these reasons, human hair was considered as more precious than gold or silver.
We should remember that most times the hair used for the jewellery pieces wasn't taken from the head of somebody who had just died as the hair would be too brittle: in some cases people would leave locks of hair with solicitors to make sure a memorial piece would be done after their death (that's what Queen Victoria and Albert did; actually the Queen exchanged locks of freshly cut hair - her own, and those of her children and grandchildren - with members of her family on birthdays and anniversaries. The hair was then used for jewellery pieces).
There were different types of hairwork: plaits were woven and preserved into lockets, or fashioned into bracelets, necklaces and brooches that look as if they were made with a thin thread that formed a mesh-like material.
The techniques behind hairwork are probably the most intriguing thing about this art: at times strands of hair were intricately woven on a pillow (think about bobbin lace) or worked on a tube (similar to the one used for French knitting) to create open weave hair pieces. The results were then stiffened with glue (or lacquer) and transformed into bows, rosettes, acorns, crosses and other shapes.
In the palette work technique, hair was laid flat and woven into a pattern, then cut with stencils into shapes; in the table work process, hair was plaited into jewellery or heirlooms.
Different colours of hair added variation, while gold and gilt ornaments or gems enriched the pieces. While some of these pieces were very intricate, they were also extremely light to wear.
Dedicated artisans would make these complex designs and patterns, but many women would instead work on these pieces by themselves to prove their devotion to a special person (this is the reason why the name of the makers of these pieces rarely survived). They would make the hairwork following instructions from publications dedicated to ladies' works.
Sometimes it is possible to find pieces made with dyed horse hair as well, even though experts claim they may have been created for the owner of a beloved horse.
While in Europe hairwork memorial pictures were popular, in the United States they favoured elaborate wreaths of hair and wire: made of one person's hair they were mourning objects; when they featured the hair of multiple people - dead and alive - they were considered as sentimental family trees. The hair in the wreaths was woven and braided into a variety of shapes, usually flowers, leaves, pine cones and birds. The wreaths also featured ribbons and beads and were usually placed behind glass in a shadow box.
It is not rare to stumble upon hairwork in antique shops especially in the United States, but the best way to admire these pieces is in museums across the world, especially the British Museum in London.
The British Museum holds an intriguing collection – featuring bracelets, brooches, earrings and rings from the 1840s to the 1860s - donated by Ann Louise Luthi, author of the book "Sentimental Jewellery" (The Shire Book). Among the others there are tight table-braided bracelets and pieces by London-based Swiss-born Antoni Forrer of Hanover Street - "Artist in Hair and Jewellery. By appointment to The Queen". In a box Forrer himself left instructions to the recipient, to remind the wearer about the fact that the piece was fragile: "Madame, Please always to UNDO the clasp before putting on the bracelet."
The fragility of these pieces was a great metaphor to hint the human condition, yet, as the years passed and as fashion changed, the passion for hairwork simply died (besides, using human hair for jewellery, was probably also seen as unsanitary).
Want to try your hand at hairwork? Well, the techniques behind hairwork are pretty fascinating and there are a few modern artists who have been working along these lines. Yet, in case you decide to try hairwork, maybe don't take it to the obsessive level of Queen Victoria: when the Emperor and Empress of France visited London in 1855, Queen Victoria presented Eugénie with a bracelet of her own hair. According to the queen's diary the recipient was moved to tears by the gift. Or maybe she was crying because she was deeply disturbed by the rather unique present. Guess we will never know.
All images in this post © The Trustees of the British Museum
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