"Hair Today, Shorn Tomorrow" - An Article on Victorian Hair Work from Yankee Magazine, January 1974
At a recent auction in New England, I picked up perhaps my favorite piece of Victorian hair art to ever pass through my hands - a breathtaking tree of human hair flowers encased in a cloche dome. What made it particularly interesting was the provenance accompanying it, which indicated that it was crafted from the hair of members of the Upham family by Isabella Upham Morse, around the turn of the century. The specific history of the antiques I find is usually lost to time, so to get an identified example of hair work was really special.
In the accompanying note written by Isabella's granddaughter, Janice Gay Collins, she remarked, "I also hope this piece would stay in the family." One of the most common questions I get when handling some of the deeply personal material culture that passes through my hands is, "didn't the family want this?!" Sadly, more often than not, as was the case here, when the older generations die off, these relics are sent to estate liquidators and auctions.
I was a bit sad that this piece didn't stay with the family, as Janice had hoped, but my sadness was soothed when the customer who purchased this from my store emailed me to say, "I’m going to have to move all my hair art and jewelry around to make this the centerpiece. Just amazing." I know it is in a home where it will be loved and cherished.
When I purchased this piece, it came with some pages cut from the January 1974 issue of Yankee magazine tucked into the dome, which contain an article about the history and disappearing craft of hair work, contextualized for the late 20th century. I couldn't find this article anywhere online, and thought it would be a worthwhile document to digitize and share to be enjoyed by collectors, enthusiasts, and makers of this art form. It is interesting reading this in an age of antiques and oddities where there are few things more sought after by young collectors than these works.
The following is copied directly from the article, originally written by Lillian Baker Carlisle. She seems to have had good humor about her punny choice of a title for the piece - the "sorry" note following the title was her addition, not mine. Enjoy!
Hair Today, Shorn Tomorrow
(sorry!)
by Lillian Baker Carlisle
ACCOMPLISHED CRAFTSMEN OF THE 1970s are taking a fresh look at some of the Victorian arts and crafts and finding, in the painstaking work done in the past century, imaginative and creative hobbies that can be adapted to the lifestyle of this century. The enthusiastic new respect for old-time skills commenced some 15 years ago with an awakened interest in antique embroideries, particularly crewel work. Since then, other crafts such as feather work, ceramics, shell work, leather crafting, and macramé have been rediscovered. At demonstration craft shows, one can find lace-makers pricking their patterns on lace pillows, glass blowers with gathers of glass tooling them into small crystal sculptures, and woodworkers sawing and fitting together blocks of wood to make antique toys. The spinning and weaving of natural home-grown wool seems on the edge of a new wave of popularity.
There is one craft from the past century, however, that has not surfaced as yet, probably because during its term of greatest popularity—the third quarter of the 19th century—it was an art passed on by word of mouth. When the practitioners of this craft died, so did the knowledge of how to accomplish the work. Written instructions are scarce, and the artistic knowledge of how to fabricate flower designs from human hair is pretty much a lost art.
In its day, hair work was a veritable craze, and in a few attics, one can still find a shadow-box frame filled with a wreath of hair flowers. Many antique shops show one or more examples, but dealers will frequently tell you that in the past they threw out the hair flowers from a handsome frame and sold the frame for more than they could have realized from the entire wall decoration.
Hair has always occupied a special place in the minds and hearts of us all. The story of Samson's severed locks was probably one of the first Old Testament stories told to us. De Bry's Travel Book, published in 1592, showed a copper plate engraving of the burial ceremony among American Indians in which six wives, clad only in shoulder scarfs, are shown scattering the hair shorn from their own heads over the graves of their fallen warrior husbands. During the 18th century in England, America, and continental Europe, it was the fashion to distribute locks of hair of the deceased loved ones to family and friends. Sometimes this hair, braided or woven in intricate loops, was made up into memorial jewelry and set in pins or rings.
The style of wearing memorial hair jewelry continued well into the 19th century, and through Godey’s Lady’s Book, even as late as 1856, one could order for $12 an ivory mourning brooch set in gold. The design on the brooch consisted of strands of hair artfully arranged and glued to the ivory in miniature scenes featuring weeping willows, tombs, and trees. In addition to jewelry, hair work was incorporated in a fan, ornamented with gold spangles, composed on transparent gauze-like material formed of hair, and parasol handles intermingled hair work with other ornaments. Directions were also included in Godey’s Lady’s Book during the 1860s, showing readers how to weave and work the strands of hair from living persons into watch bands, earrings, necklaces, cuff buttons, and bracelets.
The fad that seemed to sweep the country in hair work, however, was the making of flowers. After fabricating, they were combined in a pleasing grouping, sewed to cardboard, and mounted in shadow-box frames. Although some of these arrangements took the form of crosses or small corsage-type bouquets, the majority were disposed in a circular wreath form. Often inside the wreath was a centered design of another hair-flower bouquet or a basket (itself woven of hair) in which smaller hair flowers were gracefully arranged. Such hair work floral compositions, still in excellent condition, survive today in substantial numbers.
Like most of the other parlor arts of the mid-19th century, the handcraft of fashioning flowers from hair was an inexpensive hobby. Tresses from each member of a family or from friends were collected. By taking hair from several persons, a good color range was possible. Flowers made up in blond and pale shades of brown contrasted with jet, sable brown, red, or silvery locks making up other blossoms.
To finish off the flowers, workers used coiled black wire, surmounted by glass, pearl, or cut steel beads for the trembling, springy filament portion of the stamens. These filaments were available at fancy goods and stationers' shops, or could be ordered through the mail order department of Godey’s Lady’s Book. In the November 1861 issue of that magazine, we read that on the 11th, the Fashion Editress mailed to Mrs. T.P. “stamens for hair flowers.” Hair workers living on farms found their own solution to the problem of fabricating realistic stamens. They wound horsehair tightly around a small knitting needle, boiled it, and after drying, pushed the permanently waved coarse horsehair off the needle.
The hair worker, after completing all her flowers, leaves, wheat, tendrils, and filaments, was now on her own resources in assembling a pleasing group. It was here that the artists were separated from the novices, the professionals from the amateurs. Some of the arrangements found today reflect the artistic talent of a creative designer; others seem scanty and poorly arranged.
Size of the completed design depended, quite naturally, on the amount of hair available to the maker. As a general rule, a piece of hair work was half the length of the hairs which made it. One marvels at the generosity of those who would part with locks long and thick enough to form some of the enormous wreaths we find today. Finished arrangements varied in size from the wreath (made entirely from grey hairs) not much larger than a postcard, to be seen in Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan, to a huge horseshoe-shaped design in a home-made oak frame (measuring 52 ½” square and 6 ½” deep) at Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont.
Prior to the "flapper era," hair was worn long by women and longish by men. During the second quarter of our 20th century, fashion decreed bobbed hair for females and clipped hair for males. Since the 1950s, hair length has been increasing. A long, straight, shining curtain of hair for girls was de rigueur during the 1960s, but now in the 1970s, curly hair is back in vogue, and afros are worn by both sexes. Fashion, as it always has in the past, will change again, and soon boys and men who fought so fiercely to defend their right to wear long hair will cut it off again. The marcelled bob for girls is just over the horizon. The popularity of the 1920s musical comedies, recently revived on Broadway, will play a part in reviving the flapper styles, and girls will sacrifice their waist-length locks. It would seem a good time to re-learn the craft of hair-flower-making and preserve a symbol of the 1960s forever.
Items needed to make hair flowers were few. Live hair—that is, hair from the head of a living person—was the major requirement. Annealed wire, very fine; floss, thread or cord for wrapping; gold, cut steel or glass beads for centers; scissors; and knitting needles of two or three sizes were the other necessities.
The locks of hair were brushed as smoothly as possible and tied in separate bunches. A piece of wire was doubled in the middle and twisted about two inches. The following directions for the actual making of leaves and flat flowers are quoted from Art Recreations, by Mme. Urbino, Prof. Day, and others, published by J. F. Tilton Company of Boston in 1859 and again in 1863:
"Let us begin with a leaf. Take the twisted wire between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand for a handle, as it were: fasten to this the ends of a thin strand of smooth hair: (it is well to draw it several times between the thumb and finger to make it glossy). Bend the ends of the wire to the right and left: then holding the end of a knitting needle horizontally over the twist of the wire, pass the strand of hair around the needle and fasten it by crossing the wires below to the right and left. (Figure 1). So continue till you have woven sufficient for the leaf. Slip from the needle (Figure 2) and you will have nice loops neatly fastened by a fine wire much resembling gimp. Bend this into the desired shape, twist the ends of the wire (Figure 3 and 3a) and cover with silk braid as near the color of the hair as possible. The leaves may be made of different sizes and varies by the size of the knitting needle. To make daisies, asters, etc. turn this looped wire round and round to represent a flat surface. (Figure 4). It is well to have a pattern. If you cannot see hair flowers, take natural ones, and by fastening strands of hair to a wire and binding with floss, endeavor to imitate nature."
Several kinds of hair flowers were used in the wreaths: the flat type described above, and a three-dimensional one made as follows: A short strand of hair was smoothed between the fingers and wrapped with thread, floss, or cord. A wire was inserted under the thread. Figure 5 shows front and back views of two strands with the wire in place. Each of these strands will form a single petal for the completed flower. Figure 6 shows front and back views of the petal after it has been bent over and bound again with thread. Note that the bend starts at the place where the first winding ended. Bend the wire first, then follow through with hair. In Figure 7 and 7a, five petals have been bound together with a hair center to make a complete bloom. The center is made by bending into a circle shape a small amount of the looped "gimp." This is then placed in the middle of the bloom and wrapped in with the petals. Figure 8 shows a cone flower formed from bent gimp twisted around six times and then pushed up into a flower. The wire gives the form to retain the cone shape. The last picture, Figure 9, shows a strip of looped gimp that has been wrapped around a knitting needle, slipped off, and then slightly sprung apart. Such designs were called "wheat" and were used to make tendrils and fill spaces between blossoms.
In the old days, some hair-flower workers moistened the hair with oil to make it glossy, but contemporary directions caution against this, as oil attracts insects. In its natural and clean state, hair is almost impervious to decay, and flowers are more durable and neater when smoothed solely by friction of the fingers.
Author's Note:
I am indebted to Mr. Philemon G. Frisbie of Vestaburg, Michigan, who made the samples shown with the text. Mr. Frisbie is a noted collector and teaches art in Vestaburg. He is an accomplished musician and proficient in many of the arts and crafts of the 19th century. In 1938, his great-aunt taught him the old-time handcraft of making hair flowers. Here are a few hints from Mr. Frisbie to modern-day enthusiasts undertaking this craft.
MAKING THE GIMP: Crossing the wires. (Figure 1). It is important to cross the wires in the same manner each time after wrapping the hair around the needle. I find that it is easiest for me to cross the right wire to the left and then the left wire under and to the right. The needle, hair, and wires are held so that the work wraps on the needle from left to right. Long hair is not really a necessity, as shorter hair may be worked as needed when wrapping it around the knitting needle. The ends that are not caught in by the wire may be clipped where the splice overlapping occurs. When I say shorter hair, I refer to lengths as short as 5".
REGARDING THE WIRE: When choosing the wire, one should beware of one that has too much temper in it. If one could find a wire like that used in galvanized window screening, it would be ideal. There is a wire for binding jewelry pieces when soldering that may be suitable, but I've not seen it yet, so I could not advise about it until tested.
FLOWER PETALS (Figure 5): Note the addition of a piece of wire with the hair. This is added to hold the petal in position. Hair as short as 3"—sometimes even shorter—can be used for the petals.
WRAPPING STEMS: On the antique hair flowers, the stems are wrapped with thread or floss, but I do feel that modern stem-wrapping materials and tapes are more suitable. I purposely did not wrap the stems so that you could see how they are assembled.