While I was searching online about artists who use hair in art I came across an article about how hair was used in the civil war and the Victorian era for making jewellery. This was done for celebrating someones life or mourning them. Hair was also used used to make jewellery and gifts to give to friends and relatives to express their bond and even suggest romance. I think now-a-days if you were to make a gift out of hair people would think you were mad. Soldiers would often carry a watch on a chain made from their loved ones hair. This was to give them something to be close to them all the while. Hair was also ground down and used as paint. Apparently if you were to make hair jewellery you had to have straight hair, it had to be cut; not fallen and, it couldn’t be tangled. Not sure what they would think of my work.
I appear to have become distracted at what I was first searching for however I find this really intriguing. It proves that even back in those days hair was seen as a close to bond to whoevers that hair was. Although it was used in a much neater, aesthetical wasy to make ‘nice’ things, rather than to disgust people which is what I am doing with my hair.
I have also just found out there is actually a hair museum in America! ‘Leila’s Hair Museum’. There are 159 wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewellery containing/made of human hair dating before 1900. I find this fascinating in itself that there is actually a museum for hair, and that something so abject can be made to look that beautiful.
Often hair is kept from a child’s first haircut or when someone cuts long hair, short. Nothing is really ever done with this hair, just preserved to look back on, but once this hair is made into something it appears to become abject. I find hair in the plughole or in food a horrible thought, but hair falls out all of the time and can be used to make some really interesting pieces.
