Catherine Chandler HU/SS 101 Phil Harris Victorian Hair Jewelry

Hair is the most malleable part of the human body, and extremely personal, being one of the first parts of one that others see, and as such, has been manipulated with color, ornaments, haircuts, and vastly differing styles throughout history. Its ability to regenerate makes hair a readily available material to give to others as a symbol of friendship, business partnership, or remembrance. On the body, it can be viewed as a sign of strength and powerwhether a Nazarite or a Queen, ones hair has signified status and character throughout the world. Worn off the body, hair has been viewed as a symbol of love, friendship, and sorrow. Similarly, jewelry has been worn in various forms for millennia, and in many instances, has symbolized protection, healing from ailments, strength, or power. Hair worn in jewelry is an extremely personal form of jewelry, and has been common for hundreds of years, with popularity peaking during the Victorian era of the 1800s. It was during this time that sentimental jewelry, particularly mourning jewelry, in a range of different materials including hair jewelry, became highly fashionable and was far more accessible with the advent of industry and mass production of goods. There are multiple styles of hair jewelry, from simple plaits under glass worn as a brooch, to far more complex hollow beads and forms woven out of many strands of hair and worn in chains, necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Although Victorian hair jewelry evolved through many formations, it was consistently infused with meaning, not 1

only through the use of hair of loved ones, but also through the time and effort to make these ornaments. From the time of the Nazarites when a mans hair was considered to hold his power, all the way through to Victorian times, human hair has continually held significant meaning. In the story of Samson and Delilah, Samson is a Nazarite, and his devotion to God through the restrictions of that system, including not cutting his hair since birth, have given him immense amounts of strength. However, when Delilah finally convinces him to tell her where his strength comes from, she betrays him to the Philistines, who cut off his hair, which weakens him significantly, and hold him imprisoned. It is the re-growth of his hair and his devotion to God that gives him physical strength again, and enough that he might topple a building where leaders of the Philistines are all gathered, killing them and himself (Judges 14-16). This story is a prime example of some of the meaning given to hair. Jumping ahead to the 1800s, we can see that hair still has high levels of importance. C. Jeanenne Bell notes that, The roots of Victorian hairwork jewelry can be traced back to the 1500s when the wearing of Memento Mori (literally, remember you must die) jewelry was popular. More than a fashion, Memento Mori was what we refer to today as an attitude. By wearing a piece of this jewelry, one conveyed the impression of being a serious, philosophical, retrospective, religious person who was cognizant of the ever-near presence of death (p. 8). Memento Mori jewelry often featured motifs such as skulls and skeletons, icons that we now associate with death, morbidity, and holidays commemorating death such as Halloween and Day of the Dead. By the seventeenth century, these symbols were featured on jewelry not

to warn of imminent death, but to remind one of the loss of a loved one. This custom grew in popularity and was influenced by the death of King Charles I in 1649, which inspired his followers to wear jewelry in his memory (Luthi, p. 4). Some of the first instances of jewelry containing hair are from this event, and can be seen again in commemoration of victorious occasions such as when Lord Nelson defeated the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile in 1798Lady Hamilton had a medallion commissioned which contained palette-worked curls of hair on opaline glass ground, and features nautical motifs such as an anchor and trident, symbols of hope (Bell, p. 8-9). During this time, motifs as well as stones were given individual meanings as a way to communicate a message about the wearer or the person being commemorated. Similarly, symbols often seen on Victorian hair jewelry included scenes depicting a weeping willow and gravestones denoting the death of a loved one, usually inscribed with their initials or a sentence of remembrance. In 1837, Queen Victoria ascended the throne at the young age of 18. It is noted that the Queens charisma would grow with each year of her reign, which ended with her death in 1901 (Dawes and Davidov). Victoria was betrothed to Prince Albert, whom she dearly loved and was married to in 1840. Dawes and Davidov reflect that With her betrothal, the whole of England fell in love, and the atmosphere in the early Victorian period (1837-1860) was as romantic as it was ever to be. Styles in dress and jewelry reflected this romanticism: diaphanous lightweight gowns, delicate gold and gemstone parures (matched sets), strands of seed pearls, and small lockets (p. 17).

During this period, both Europe and England were under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, which had a measurable affect on the production of goods such as jewelry (Black, p. 247), and its availability to more people than ever before. Previous to the Industrial Revolution, one would have their mourning jewelry made by hand and customized to the person they were mourning. However, by the 1840s brooches and rings were available for purchase with the words In Memory of spelled out around the bezel in black enameled Gothic style letters. In the center was a glazed compartment for hair. The local jeweler had only to put in the deceaseds hair and engrave the pertinent information on the back of the brooch or inside the shank of the ring. The hairwork was sometimes as simple as a flat braided ground or as complex as an elaborate palette-worked composition executed by a professional or someone in the family (Bell, p. 11-12). It is observed that Queen Victoria was quite fond of jewellery. Not only did she have quite a collection herself, but often gave it away as presents, particularly at weddings. For formal occasions, she had grand parures, but her true affection was for sentimental jewellery (Black, p. 252). With the death of Prince Albert in 1861, which happened shortly after the death of her mother, the Queen went into an extended state of mourning, and the rest of the nation grieved along with her, following strict rules regarding mourning fashion and jewelry (Dawes and Davidson, p. 20). Jet was one of the greatly popular materials for mourning jewelry, and was the only material worn at court (Dawes and Davidson). Gere states, Apart from jet which was used for mourning jewellery of all kinds, the Victorians had a great preference for hair work, a large quantity of which was produced by young ladies

following the instructions in a monthly magazine or one of the booklets which were available (p. 247). The most common form of hair jewelry worn was the brooch, which could be constructed from a number of materials such as jet, tortoiseshell, gold, or enamel, and would have a central panel to hold a lock of hair (Black, p. 255). Other fashionable items included bracelets, which were adored in the 1840s, as well as watch chains, for a gentleman was never to be without his watch (Bell, p. 17). Queen Victoria owned a variety of hair jewelry, and treasured the pieces containing the hair of her beloved husband, wearing a piece of it every day (Bell, p. 12). The popularity of hair jewellery surged in the 1850s, partly because the British royalty considered it appropriate to give or receive. There is evidence suggesting that Queen Victoria held a gift of hairwork in high esteem: When Queen Victoria presented a bracelet made from her hair to Empress Eugenie during a state visit in April 1855, it was highly publicized. This gave hairwork love tokens a prestigious boost in popularity (Bell, p. 14). There were a variety of styles of Victorian hair jewelry, which changed over time during the nineteenth century. A simple style of plaited hair laid under glass and set in a brooch or piece of jewelry was reminiscent of Georgian styles (Fig. 1), which evolved into what are referred to as palette-worked pieces, named such because they were often created using an artists palette, those pieces in which the hair was manipulated to form curls, landscapes, or imagery (Fig. 2). Bell notes, Palette-worked devices [pieces] were so popular that M.A. Young, a London hair worker, published a catalog of his patterns in the 1840s. For a few decades in the mid 1800s, the popularity of palette-worked pieces was overshadowed by table-

worked design. In 1863, Youngs successors, William Halford and Charles Young reproduced his designs in the Jewellers Book of Patterns in Hairwork. Speights A Lock of Hair followed in 1871. These publications helped to create another wave of palette work popularity (p. 27). In palette work, the artist arranges strands of hair, which have been cleaned and treated in a borax mixture, on a flat surface and glues them to a base material, such as paper or something called beaters skin. After the glue is dry, the piece is either trimmed and set as is, as would be done with a basket plait pattern and curls, or the artist would cut out shapes that could be used to form a different pattern, such as a floral arrangement, which would then be glued together and set in jewelry (Sherrow, p. 147). Another style of hair jewelry is table-worked jewelry (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4), also referred to as hairwork, which gained momentum after the 1850s. This style propelled hair jewelry into a different realm, as it removed the narrative from the pieces, and allowed the hair to be formed into intriguing shapes and objects. In 1853, the United States held its own version of the Crystal Palace Exposition, which included many displays of hairwork jewelry. Bell quotes the October 8, 1853 version of the Gleason Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion as saying, the perfection to which this new art has been brought has led to the general adoption of these ornaments by the ladies, and they are now almost as much worn by the upper-ten as are golden ornaments; and that the effectto say nothing of the pleasant ideal of thus wearing the hair of those we love and cherishis incomparably superior to metallic jewelry, no person of good taste will venture to deny (p. 14).

Hairwork jewelry became very fashionable, and yet there were strict rules surrounding the exchange of hair with the opposite sex. Never would a young lady of social standing consider giving a lock of hair to a man unless they were betrothed. However, it was common for young girls to spend many hours weaving locks of hair and exchanging them with friends to be kept in keepsake books, much like modern day scrapbooks (Bell, p. 14). Part of the drive in the popularity of hairwork was that it could be created by the wearer, in her own home, and was considered a suitable activity for women. Many women chose to create their own because at the time, there came to light a scandal in which jewelers who were sent hair to be worked into jewelry instead swapped it out for hair they already had on hand that had been previously cleaned and prepared. What a horror it was to realize that a trusted jeweler would discard the hair of a loved one! Women were encouraged to obtain their own hairworking tables, which became a standard fixture in the drawing room. Here the ladies spent hours happily engaged in the weaving of a family treasure on the small unobtrusive table. For those who didnt want to limit their art to one room, Godeys published a sketch for a work table that was hooked to a wooden clamp, so it could be attached to the rim of a table or chest in any room (Bell, p. 15). Godeys refers to Godeys Ladys Book, a ladies magazine of the time that was filled with fashions of the day, patterns for embroidery and home crafts, poetry, stories, and etiquette questions. Godeys provided patterns for hairworking, as well as a service to create tableworked jewelry for those who did not have enough talent to produce it themselves. In December 1850, Godeys included formal instructions for table-worked hair

jewelry, with fairly complicated patterns possibly intended for an audience who already knew the basics. In February 1859 January 1860, they published another series of articles titled The Art of Ornamental Hair Work, slated towards beginners, as the interest in hairwork continued to grow with a new generation (Bell, p. 46). Table-working hair was far more complex than palette-working, requiring multiple tools such as a work table, lead bobbin weights in four different sizes or small bags filled with coins or shot each weighing exactly the same as the others, moulds, patterns, S Hooks, and of course, hair (Bell, p. 47 -49). In addition to being more complex as far as tools and process is concerned, table-working also required much longer lengths of hair, although some pieces such as earrings and some chains could be made using shorter lengths of hair as long as the ends of the finished weavings were joined by gold tubes. As a general rule, the hairwork pieces would end up half the length of the hairs that were used to make them (Bell, p. 49). There are many booklets that have been produced containing extensive patterns for hairwork, ranging from easy to very advanced. It is no wonder that women spent hours in their drawing rooms at this practice. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, there was a shift in attitudes towards mourning. Black notes that, photographic mourning lockets, virtually identical to their counterparts containing hair, became fashionable, but by the time the camera was within the reach of the man in the street, the emotional climate in England had changed and photographic lockets were used more as reminders of the living (p. 256). At the request of her subjects, and those who were close to her, the

Queen started to relax mourning requirements around 1885, and she herself wore silver jewelry to her Silver Jubilee (also referred to as her Golden Jubilee) in 1887 (Black, p. 258). Through its evolution during the nineteenth century, Victorian hair jewelry was consistently infused with meaning, whether through the use of a loved ones hair, or through the many hours of building complex woven pieces to be worn proudly, these objects were treasures to remind the wearer of someone they loved. At the end of the nineteenth century, attitudes towards mourning changed, with many people tired of the strict rules surrounding dress and customs, and mourning became a more private custom. New technologies were advancing, such as photography, which gave people a new way to remember their loved ones. However, hair still remains the most malleable part of the body, and while we may not wear locks of hair in jewelry, it continues to signify status and symbolism throughout the world. While hair jewelry may be seen as morbid today, once one looks into the meaning and practice behind the creation and wearing of hair jewelry, the meanings become more clear and understandable. In the twenty-first century, one would be hard pressed to find jewelry that holds more significance than hair jewelry.

Appendix

Fig. 1 VICTORIAN gold and enameled brooch with plaited thick blonde hair under glass with extended pin stem, "In Memory Of" encircling frame, and engraved on back, 1-1/2" by 2": Ms Buchannan, died 12th Nov 1843 John Wilson died 4th June 1843 Seen in Christie Romero's "Warman's Jewelry, 3rd Ed, page 35 and in Becker's "Antique & Twentieth Century Jewelry" on page 106. Accessed 1 December 2011. <http://www.morninggloryjewelry.com/victorian-hair-jewelry-aid-52.html>

Fig. 2 Victorian palette work hair flower bouquet set into a gold with black enameling lover's knot brooch, 2". Accessed 1 December 2011. <http://www.morninggloryjewelry.com/victorian-hairjewelry-aid-52.html>

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Fig. 3 Victorian hair bow pin with acorn drops with the :knot" of the bow of gold tone inscribed with the name "Lizzie", some unraveling at bottoms of acorns. This is shown in the reprint of "The Art of Hair Work, 1875" by Mark Campbell, page 144. Accessed 1 December 2011. <http://www.morninggloryjewelry.com/victorian-hair-jewelry-aid-52.html>.

Fig. 4 Victorian hair large hoop earrings, gold filled fittings, 1-7/8" long and 1-5/8" wide. Bell's "Collector's Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry" page 141. These earrings are shown in the reprint of "The Art of Hair Work, 1875" by Mark Campbell, page 160. Accessed 1 December 2011. <http://www.morninggloryjewelry.com/victorian-hair-jewelry-aid-52.html>.

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Bibliography

Bell, C. Jeanenne. Collectors Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry: Identification & Values. Kentucky: Collector Books, 1998. Black, J. Anderson. A History of Jewelry: Five Thousand Years. Park Lane: New York, 1982. Dawes, Ginny Redington and Corinne Davidov. Victorian Jewelery: Unexplored Treasures. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1991. Gere, Charlotte. Victorian Jewelry Design. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1972.

Hesse, Rayner W. Jewelrymaking Through History, An Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009. Luthi, Ann Louise. Sentimental Jewellery. Great Britain: Shire, 2008. Meyers, Karen, Robert N. Golden, and Fred Peterson. The Truth About Death And Dying. 2nd ed. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Sherrow, Victoria. Encyclopedia of Hair: a Cultural History. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. "The Queen's Golden Jubilee>History of Jubilees>Queen Victoria." The Official Website of the British Monarchy. The Royal Household, 2011. Web. 30 Nov 2011. <http://www.royal.gov.uk/HMTheQueen/TheQueenandspecialanniversaries /HistoryofJubilees/QueenVictoria.aspx>

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