Bad Crafts: Victorian hairwork

I love revisiting an old topic when I learn something new, especially when it is super gross. A while back I wrote about the Victorian fondness for making memorials out of locks of dead people's hair. Well, it turns out that this was just a subset of a larger craft, which was collectively known as "hairwork."

Hairwork involved making brooches, pins, and who knows what out of human hair. Many people clipped the hair from the head of their beloved departed and commissioned hairwork as a memorial, it's true. But other people made hairwork jewelry just… because they could. Why not, right?

Apparently, one factor that drove the popularity of hairwork as a craft among the Victorians was a confluence of fashion and the economy. There was a rage for huge elaborate wigs in the 17th and 18th centuries, and when this fad faded in the Victorian era, many wigmakers and hair artists found themselves unemployed with a wide set of hair-related skills.

Hairwork was also popular in other times and places as well, partly because human hair is such an easily available craft medium, and partly because human hair is surprisingly durable. Hair remains long after the rest of the body decays, it can last for thousands of years if cared for properly.

Hairwork was concentrated in workshops across Europe. Buyers would travel the countryside, offering to pay large amounts of money in exchange for peasants' hair. The bundles of hair were shipped off to the hairworks, where it was turned into intricate brooches, bracelets, and other items of adornment. Amazingly detailed miniature scenes were painstakingly crafted out of different shades of hair.

Today, a few people still practice hairwork as a way of keeping the craft alive. Many people purchase horsehair for their crafts, but others buy hair on the open market (or cut their own).

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons