New Exhibit at PHS

If you are as interested in hair art as I am or just want to check out some beautiful Victorian art made by a prominent Brunswick family, be sure not to miss this exhibit at the Pejepscot Historical Society!

To Make A Hair Wreath

Once a Victorian woman had carefully--sometimes obsessively--collected the hair she needed to finish her hair wreath, what was her next step? Turning to the "how-to" books of the time, most of today's readers would have been frustrated by the lack of detail. 

Take, for example, the 1859 book Art Recreations: Being a Complete Guide. The authors, Levina B. Urbino & Professor Henry Day, present their instruction for creating the different flowers of a hair wreath in ridiculously vague terms. To make a daisy or aster, the hair wreath maker was told to "turn this looped wire round and round to present a flat surface; make firm by fine wire underneath." Other than that, they provide no specific instruction. Instead, they tell the reader that "It is well to have a pattern. If you can not see hair flowers, take natural ones, and by fastening strands of hair to a wire, and binding with floss, endeavor to imitate Nature". Basically, Urbino & Day pawn the reader off onto finding a hair wreath--or a person--from which they can copy. 

The title page of Urbino & Day's book Art Recreations. The book instructs the reader in a variety of fancy work skills, such as drawing, painting, papier mache, leather work and even taxidermy! The entire book is free to read & search on Google--just click here.

In fact, that's probably how most women learned how to make hair wreaths in the first place--not from magazines like Godey's Lady's Book or Harper's Magazine or books like Urbino & Day's --but other women. Like many other fancy work skills, like sewing, painting or embroidery, being able to create a hair wreath was a skill passed from woman to woman. Strangely, because the hair wreath craze really only lasted for 30 years (from 1850 to 1880), knowledge of creating hair wreaths did not cross many generations. Rather, women of the time probably learned how to make these unique creations from their contemporaries--friends, sisters, aunts, and cousins. Because hair wreaths became so unpopular so quickly, it is unlikely mothers were teaching the passé skill to their daughters after 1900. Indeed, the dearth of hair wreaths from post-1900 supports this idea. 

Hair wreath created by the women of Hope, Maine during the 1860s--now on display at the Hope Historical Society House. Image is from their website. 

Though we addressed some issues of collecting hair to create a hair wreath in the last post, there are a couple more things to note. Once hair was gathered--be it from a living person or a dead one--it could be saved for later by sealing it in paper with wax melted over a flame. Though accounts differ, this may be what poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's second wife, Frances Appleton, was doing when her dress caught fire in July 1861. Longfellow tried to put her out, but her burns were too severe and she died the next morning. Longfellow himself received burns on his face so serious that he could no longer shave, and thus grew the beard for which he is so recognizable today. 

Another neat tidbit about hair wreaths? Brown was the most popular hair color! As explained by Alexanna Speight in her 1871 book about hair work, The Lock of Hair:

 We certainly thought golden reigns supreme, but it would appear not to be so. Among the better classes of English people, however, brown is said to be the prevailing color; but then our population is made up of some many races that we have all sorts of hair.

Speight goes on to explain that it all has to do with being marriageable--red heads, blondes and those with light brown hair did not marry as often as those with dark brown or black hair did! Though her statistics are certainly questionably, there is certainly no shortage of brown hair in the hair wreaths we find today!

Sources: 

Bell, C. Jeanenne. Collector's Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry: Indentification & Values. Paducah, Kentucky: Collector Books, 1998. 

Hope Historical Society website.  

McFarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2005.

Speight, Alexanna.  The Lock of Hair. 1871.

Urbino, L.B. & Henry Day. Art Recreations: Being A Complete Guide. Boston: S.W. Tilton & Co., 1859.

Mourning Art: Hair Work

Hair wreaths, the subject of one of the most popular posts on this blog, deserve more attention. In the next few posts, I'll be writing about hairwork & hair wreaths.

Like so many other quirks of Victorian society, we can credit the popularity of hair art (aka hairwork) during this time to Queen Victoria. Not only did the English queen help standardize many Victorian era mourning practices, she started a craze with hair tokens. When her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, Victoria spent the last 40 years of her life in deep mourning over the loss. To memorialize her beloved Albert, she carefully preserved locks of his hair and had the royal jeweler, Garrad, work the snippets into at least 8 different pieces of jewelry. She even reportedly required that her 8 year-old son wear "a Locket with beloved Papa's hair" around his neck. 

Brooch  of brown, basket-weave hair. From the Morning Glory Antiques & Jewelry website, which offers pieces like this for sale (this one is currently priced at $110).

But Victorians did not stop at jewelry. They found increasingly creative ways to turn hair into unexpected objects or to work precious locks into other forms of art. Between 1850 and 1916 strands of hair were woven, braided and shaped into baskets, tea pot sets, cups, mourning pictures of willow trees and urns, and even purses. Perhaps the most ridiculous item of all was the "full-length, life-size portrait of Queen Victorian, executed entirely in human hair" which "proved particularly popular" at the 1855 Paris Exposition. Alas, I have been unable to find a picture or drawing of this impressive sample of hairwork!

Hair flowers, created by wrapping hair around wire, were one form of hairwork--many flowers like these were required to create a hair wreath. On the paper below the flowers is written in pen: "Hair flowers. Probably made in 1845 or 1850." From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1986.27.2.

Nowadays, any reasonable person may ask: "Why did Victorians make all these different art pieces out of hair?" First and foremost, hair is a physical piece of the deceased, something that does not age, change or disintegrate over time like the rest of the human body does. This makes it a wonderful memorial and perfect for all of the mourning rites and practices of the day. Additionally, Victorian women created many different kind of fancy work--embroidery, painting, needlepoint, sewing, shellwork, beading and wax modelling are all examples. Hair was a perfect material to add to a woman's repertoire, since it could be woven, painted, shaped, sewn and otherwise adapted into all kinds of art forms. 

This beautiful, undated snippet of dark brown hair has been braided into a small circle, perhaps for later use in a piece of hairwork but most likely to simply serve as a souvenir. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1971.19.21.

A Victorian woman who was working on a hair wreath, hair brooch or other piece of hairwork could spend years collecting enough samples to complete her desired project. Pieces like the one pictured above could be gathered from a person at any age--for example, one lock of hair in the Pejepscot's collection is attributed to a 3 year-old, while another snippet came from an 18 year-old woman and was passed down to her granddaughter in 1883. Some professional hairworkers recommended using only "live hair, that is, hair from the head of a living person" for such work--advice that at least one Mainer listened to. In 1862 J.P. Ireland wrote to his son, who was serving in the 22nd Maine Infantry during the Civil War, that "Your mother says when your hair is long enough, to send her a lock, that she can put into a hair wreath."

Yet most hair art served as mourning art, and for many reasons hair was taken from the recently deceased's body. After all, not only was the living person no longer in need of their long tresses, but large sections of hair could be taken without affecting the person's sense of vanity. What more appropriate way to memorialize the dead by taking one last piece to remember them by?

Sources:

Bell, C. Jeanenne. Collector’s Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry: Identification & Values. Paducah, Kentucky: Collector Books, 1998.

Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Hunter, D. Lyn. “A Victorian Obsession With Death: Fetishistic Rituals Helped Survivors Cope With Loss of Loved Ones.” Berkeleyan.http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2000/04/05/death.html.

Lutz, Deborah. “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture.” Victorian Literature and Culture 39 (2011): 127-142.

Ofek, Galia. Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature & Culture. Burlington, Vermont. Ashgate Publishing Co., 2009.

Smith, Ned. The 22nd Maine Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. Jefferson, North Carolina:McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010.

Urbino,L.B. & Henry Day. Art Recreations: Being a Complete Guide. Boston:S.W. Tilton & Co., 1859.

Mourning Art: Hair Wreaths

In the library on the second floor of the Skolfield-Whittier House, hanging on a wall above the fireplace, is a shadow box. It contains a horseshoe-shaped wreath. As you get closer to it, you see that the wreath is composed of many small flowers—some gold, some white, some brown, and others silver. But this wreath isn’t made of flowers—it is made of human hair.

Hair wreath on display at the Skolfield-Whittier House,
probably made by Eugenie Skolfield Whittier or her sister Augusta Marie Skolfield.

Hair wreaths, which were primarily created between 1850 and 1880, were made by Victorian women. These women tended to be middle and upper-class, as they had more time on their hands than did their lower-class counterparts to make crafts. Usually, hair wreaths took the same shape as the one at the museum—that of a horseshoe. And, just like horseshoes, these wreaths were also hung with the open top facing up, facing heavenward.

Hair wreath made by famed botanist Kate Furbish, who is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. From the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# 1992.75.19.

Why was it important that these wreaths faced heavenward? Often, hair wreaths were created as memorials to the dead. When someone in a family died, some of their hair was collected and incorporated into the hair wreath. To make a wreath, Victorian women would start with a simply wire, horseshoe-shaped frame. Next, they would wrap the deceased’s hair around a piece of thin wire, and then shape the wire into flowers. Sometimes they would cut the hair to create tufts, simulating flower petals. Magazines like Godey’s Lady Book printed instructions on how to create these wreaths.

The first flowers to be added to the metal frame would be at the bottom, center. When another member of the family died, the older flowers would be moved up and outward, while the newer hair would take its place in the bottom center position. But hair wreaths were not always made as memorials to the dead. Sometimes, hair was collected from entire schools, churches or communities and woven into one wreath. Because hair wreaths were usually a personal celebration of a family or other group there is little evidence that they were ever created for commercial or solely decorative purposes.

A particularly elaborate hair wreath, made by Mrs. Clara B. Kennedy in 1868. From the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# OH 186.

Indeed, hair was often used as a deeply personal memento of a loved one who had passed away, but it was not exclusively used in hair wreaths. In the time before photographs were widely available or affordable, hair allowed people to carry a piece of a friend or family member around with them. Often, this hair was woven into jewelry, such as bracelets or brooches, and was often worn during the mourning period following a death in the family. Yet hair was not used exclusively by those in mourning. Victorian women often had a hair receiver on their dressing table, in which they would deposit the loose strands from their hairbrush. This hair was then used to fill pincushions—the pins would be coated with the natural oil from the hair, allowing them to move through fabric much easier.

A hair receiver, from the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# 1978.79.

In Victorian America, women utilized their own creativity to create elaborate and beautiful memorials to loved ones using hair. Today, hair wreaths live on as elaborate creations produced from one of the simplest mediums.

Sources:
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Hair Art: Jewelry to Be Worn Close to the Heart website.
Harran, Susan & Jim. “Remembering a Loved One With Mourning Jewelery”. Antique Week, December 1997.
Rombeck, Terry. “Museum Tangled in History of Hair”. LJWorld.com website, 9 October 2005.