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.

Victorian Women & Death

Looking at the statistics, it is no surprise that during the Victorian* era, women were more associated with death than men. In every single year of the Victorian era in America, the majority of women did not live long enough to see all their children grow up. In fact, it was not until 1920 when more than half of women were able to complete what we now consider a normal life cycle. Thanks primarily to the dangers of childbirth, in 1830 less than a quarter of the women in the U.S. lived long enough to see their children grow up (Green, 166). Women became associated with death not only because it seemed to target them more than men, but also because of their spiritual, emotional and domestic roles in society.

A statue of a mourning woman sits atop the monument to Captain John and Harriet S. Johnson Bishop in Pine Grove Cemetery. This grave is located near the front of the ninth row from the right.

Since colonial America, women have made up the bulk of churchgoers. By the 1870s--though priests and pastors and reverends were all men--women were the ones filling the pews and "engag[ing] in religious introspection" (Corbett, 165). Additionally, religious rhetoric increasingly posed the commercial against the religious. Because men (who held jobs as bankers and businessmen) embodied the commercial, it is no surprise that women, almost by default, became the symbol of religion. Because death was such a religious issue, the more women became associated with religion, they more they became associated with death.

In addition to religion, women were associated with emotions. Women were the major consumers of romantic and emotional literature (Corbett, 165). Because death was, and of course still is, a very emotional experience, women once again were connected to death. This association even affected mourning art. As we have already seen, mourning scenes commonly featured weeping women. In Pine Grove Cemetery, statuary featuring mourning women are among the most striking funerary art found there.

Another statue of a mourning woman in Pine Grove Cemetery. This gorgeous example is at the monument dedicated to the Williams family, located near the end of the ninth row from the right.

Victorian American women were also defined by their domesticity. A stroll through any old cemetery can reveal this. As Katharine T. Corbett points out, the graves of women refer to them as "wife of" and "mother of", whereas their male children and husbands were rarely identified in relation to women, such as "husband of" or "son of". Though the epitaphs of men would praise their business acumen, bravery or accomplishments, those of women focused on their domestic skills, labeling them good, kind mothers and wives.

But how does this female cult of domesticity relate to death? Long before the advent of funeral parlors, death was very much a domestic issue. When a loved one died, their body was cleaned, dressed and prepared by the family. The funeral itself usually took place at home, not in a church or funeral home. For example, after the 1895 death of prominent Brunswick resident Alfred Skolfield (of the Skolfield-Whittier House) the family held his funeral in the formal parlor of their home. It was not until late in the 1800s that the utilization of a funeral parlor became common among the bereaved.

The Woodside family plot, located in Pine Grove Cemetery in the front of the second row from the right.

In her article titled "Called Home: Finding Women's History in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries", Katharine T. Corbett argues that women's domestic roles extended into death. After all, she points out, what are cemeteries but "cities of the dead", filled with family plots that are arranged like houses upon a street? The Woodside family plot pictured above serves as an excellent example of the similarities between the home and the family cemetery plot. There are "walls" marking the edge of the plot--there are even front steps leading into it, just as there are front steps leading to a home. In both life and death, women found their role to be situated in the home.


*The Victorian era is defined as lasting from 1837 to 1901, when the Queen for whom the era is named ruled England.

Sources:
Corbett, Katharine T. "Called Home: Finding Women's History in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries." From Her Past Around Us: Interpreting Sites For Women's History. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 2003.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Hone: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Pejepscot Historical Society. Skolfield-Whittier House tour manual. 2009.

Alexander Thompson & Mourning Scenes

The death of a loved one in 18th and 19th century America had an effect we wouldn't usually expect today: the production of beautiful artwork. One example of unusual mourning art has already been explored in this blog, but today we turn our focus to mourning scenes.

Mourning scenes, or mourning pictures, are an early example of the sentimentalization of mourning, the practice of beautifying death which emerged in the 1800s. Young women, particularly schoolgirls, were instructed in the art of the mourning scene. A mourning scene was typically embroidered and/or painted with watercolors onto silk or linen. During the early and mid-1800s, these materials were quite expensive. Thus, mourning scenes were more commonly found hanging from the walls of upper-class homes.

Alexander Thompson, the subject of a mourning scene in the collection of the Pejepscot Historical Society, was born in Arundel on August 27, 1757. He served in the Revolutionary War for 4 years and 2 months. After marrying Lydia Wildes on April 8, 1784, the couple rode on horseback up the coast to a farm in Topsham. There, Alexander became a prominent member of the community, serving as a selectman for 6 years. In 1794, he was also a founding member of the Baptist Religious Society in Topsham. Alexander and Lydia would have 9 children together before he died on February 23, 1820. Lydia, born in 1764, would go on to live to the impressive age of 93.

Alexander Thompson's grave in Pine Grove Cemetery, located near the front of the fifth row from the right.

After his death, someone--probably one of his daughters--painted a mourning scene in Alexander's honor. Pictured below, it is in many ways an example of a typical mourning scene. In it, two women are depicted next to an urn monument which reads: "Sacred to the memory of Alex Thompson, Feb. 23, 1820. Aged 64. Mindless of love and friendship, cold he lies, deaf and unthinking clay." Behind them, a weeping willow towers over them, alongside an idyllic scene of nature and sprawling countryside.

Mourning scene for Alexander Thompson painted in watercolors on paper. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# OH 101.

Thompson's mourning scene contains three elements common to this type of mourning art. The first is the urn on the pedestal, an image which had long been a symbol of death. Ancient Greeks had used urns to hold the ashes of their dead, and classical images had become quite popular in newly-founded America. The second element is the inclusion of mourners, which were almost always women. In Thompson's mourning scene, the two women depicted both wear Empire gowns in Regency fashion, another reflection of the classical style which was very much in vogue.

Finally, the image includes a weeping willow, whose very name reflects mourning and death. Author Teresa Flanagan points out that though weeping willows were often found in the cemeteries of New England, they were relatively uncommon in the Pejepscot region which included Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell. Despite this, the tree's association with death made them a key element in mourning pictures like Thompson's. Interestingly, willows were often planted in cemeteries because of the large volumes of water they are able to absorb, which prevented the cemetery from flooding. As I wrote about last week, trees like willows have the additional benefit of purifying groundwater near cemeteries.

Another mourning scene from the collection of the Pejepscot Historical Society also contains many of these common elements. This time, the subject of mourning is Sylvia Dean Hall (circa 1768-1794). Sylvia's daughter, Betsy (born 1790 in Norton, Massachusetts), created this mourning scene of ink on silk with embroidery probably around 1807 or 1808 at Mary Blach's school in Providence, Rhode Island. Betsy chose to depict herself, her brother and her father (John Hall, Jr.) at the time of her mother's death, rather than the time the mourning scene was produced. In June 1820, Betsy married Brunswick native Leavitt Taylor Jackson and relocated here, bringing the mourning scene with her.

Mourning scene for Sylvia Dean Hall, by her daughter, Betsy Hall Jackson, ink on silk, circa 1807-1808. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# OH 108.

Just as in the later Thompson mourning scene, the Hall mourning scene depicts an urn on a pedestal, a weeping willow and a peaceful nature scene. The biggest difference between the two images is the inclusion of three figures in the Hall image, and two of them male, rather than the classic weeping female. Betsy Ring, the curator at the Rhode Island Historical Society during the 1980s, believes this to be the only example from Mary Blach's school where three figures are depicted.

Mourning scene lithograph by Nathaniel Currier. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1977.1.6.

Though the materials--silk, paint, linen--to produce mourning scenes (as well as the instruction to do so) were expensive, in time they became accessible to ordinary Americans. Another example from the collection of the Pejepscot Historical Society shows us that mournng scenes did become mass-produced as time went on. Above is a print by Nathaniel Currier (1812-1888), of Currier & Ives fame. The print contains the classic elements of an urn on a pedestal, a mourning woman and a weeping willow. But if you look closely (click the photo for a larger view), you can see that the names of the deceased on the monument has been added in pen. By the end of the 1800s, no longer was artful mourning exclusive to the wealthy. Beautifying death had become a democratic endeavor.

Sources:

Flanagan, Teresa M. Mourning on the Pejepscot. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1992.

Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2003.

"Let Virtue Be a Guide to Thee: Needlework in the Education of Rhode Island Women, 1730-1830." Exhibit of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1983-1984.

Sinnett, Rev. Charles N. Our Thompson Family in Maine, New Hampshire and the West. Concord, New Hampshire: Rumford Printing Company, 1907.

Wajda, Shirley & Helen Sheumaker, eds. Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2007.

Wheeler, George Augustus & Henry Warren. History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine, Including the Ancient Territory Known as Pejepscot. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1878.

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.